State Farm: Car-deer collisions decline

10/4/2011

Hitting a deer in your car is not only tragic for the animal, but it can also do severe damage for to your vehicle and even injure the driver. Fortunately, a recent report indicates that car-deer collisions are down in the U.S. over the past year.

State Farm compiles an annual report on collisions with these animals every year, and the total has dropped for the past three years in a row. This year, with a total measured from July 2010 through June 2011, the total number of accidents was down 7 percent, falling to 1.09 million incidents per year.

The state where deer accidents are still the most common is West Virginia. According to the report, 1 in 53 drivers will hit one of these animals over the next year. Other states with high rates include Iowa (1 in 77), South Dakota (1 in 81) and Pennyslvania (1 in 86). The state with the lowest rate was Hawaii, at 1 out of every 6,267 drivers. The insurance company included a bit of humor with this factoid, saying that it is a roughly equal chance to the driver being a practicing nudist.

Drivers need to prepare over these next few months, as November, October and December are the most common times for these accidents, in that order. It's a good time to get new tires and have your brakes serviced anyway, but these decisions could save a deer's life.