[basjoos]

At 4:30 this morning I was driving at about 40mpg down a narrow 2 lane rural road lived by forest when a large deer came running out of the woods at full speed just in time to collide with the front of my car. Then the strangest thing I ever saw happened. You've seen where a butterfly strikes the front of a normal Cd car and ricochets straight up, only to fall back to earth behind the car. Well the same thing happened with this deer. It struck the front of my car and was deflected straight upwards by the rounded front of my car. The last I saw of that deer it was going straight up at about 20 mph. If it was daylight, I would have seen that deer falling out of the sky in my rear view mirror. I wonder how high it went?

The amount of damage on my car was minimal considering that it was a 2000 lbs car hitting a full grown deer at 40mph. Since my aero modded car has no flat vertical surfaces in the front, the energies of collision were redirected upwards rather than being adsorbed into the car's frame, as it would be in a car with a conventional flat front end. I can see the imprint of the deer's legs in the nosepiece and a slight hollow in the front of the hood where the deer's body hit, and the lens of the left headlight was cracked. I ordered a new headlight assembly and will need to smooth out the metal on the hood and nose. I'll see about strengthening the parts of the front that dented, so then next time the front of my car acts as a deer scoop I'll have less damage. I didn't see the deer anywhere when I looked around after the collision, so the deer must have survived its brief flight to run off into the woods.

This is my 5th deer encounter in the close to 500,000 miles I have driven this car, so I am averaging about one deer strike every 100,000 miles. I had a lot more damage to the front of my car when I hit a deer 9 years ago at about the same speed before I modded the front end.