The Aerocivic gets a web site - Aerocivic.com

[gascort]

I got emails from friends who read ABG and thought of me this morning. I said back - yeah, Basjoos is very popular with the EM crowd. (even to the point where basjoos-ing has become an understood verb)

[Bicycle Bob]

"Another fringe benefit is protection from damage when encountering deer on the road, the low sloped front of the car scoops them up and over the top of the car with minimal damage to both deer and car."

Ah, yes, I have visions of deer floating gracefully over the roof, along with the snowflakes, feeling like Rudolph Nureyev. Seriously, has this been tested even once for deer impact? They run rather large around here, and tend to come through the windshield after you knock their legs out from under them. I'm thinking of a nice brace just on the inside of the glass to help them over.

[azraelswrd]

I have a feeling if a deer is caught in the headlights, it will skip off the windshield and fly over but not before leaving a giant spider-web glassy souvenir behind. Of course, that really depends on the mass of the deer and the speed of the deer remover.

[bennelson]

Come on guys, you haven't seen this video yet?

(Warning, it is terrible, yet hard not to laugh...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGJ0fJN10YY

[TestDrive]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

Ah, yes, I have visions of deer floating gracefully over the roof, along with the snowflakes, feeling like Rudolph Nureyev. Seriously, has this been tested even once for deer impact?

So far as I know, he hit one deer and suffered no damage.
There are links to the three posts where he describes the accident in this post.
A little later in the same thread, he says the deer was full sized.

[basjoos]

My deer scoop has been road tested one time so far on a mature doe at 45mph with only a cracked headlight lens and some minor denting on the nose and hood to show for it. The rounded nose and sloped hood redirected the impact energies upward so the last I saw of the deer, it was going straight up and it passed over the top of my car and returned to earth behind me.

The deer I hit was much larger and I was going a lot slower than that race car, so my deer was only ejected upwards to twice the height of my vehicle. Otherwise, what happened to me was identical to that video.

[Bicycle Bob]

Thanks, folks. The local 300 lb deer certainly are hard on larger vehicles around here. I wonder if the deer sometimes do most of the jumping to get over a car.

[TestDrive]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

Thanks, folks. The local 300 lb deer certainly are hard on larger vehicles around here. I wonder if the deer sometimes do most of the jumping to get over a car.

I contend with lots of deer on my nightly, 150 mile, delivery route. Consequently I've thought about this - A LOT!

In both the video clip above and in baasjoos' description the deer runs across the road at a 90* angle. The sharp wedge of the car hits the deer at or about the ankles. The main (more or less barrel shaped) mass of the deer begins falling, while the car acts on the legs as a lever rotating the main mass of the deer. By the time the main mass of the dear makes contact with the even slope of the hood, the portion of the mass that makes the contact is rotating at about the same speed that the car is moving forward (helping to minimize impact forces on the hood of the vehicle. The motion of the car and slope of the hood impart an upward force and shoot the deer into the air and over the car.

In the same sort of situation with a more conventional vehicle nose, the deer's legs are hit at the knees. The legs still act as lever, but some goodly portion of main mass of the deer makes contact with a nearly verticle surface at a speed approximately equal to the speed the vehicle is traveling. (Instant deer burger & a trip to the body shop.)

If baasjoos or the race car in the clip had hit the same deer with the deer facing directly toward or away from the front of the vehicle, the damage to the vehicle would be far more sever.

[basjoos]

But, unless you were inattentive to what was coming up ahead of you on the road, you would never hit a deer that was facing directly towards or away from the vehicle. Most car-deer collisions occur at short notice when deer shoot out from the side of the road and so are oriented at or close to a right angle to your car.

The deer I hit wasn't jumping to get over the car because in the process of the impact, it rolled 180 degrees, so it was upside-down as it passed out of the line of sight of my windshield. And it presumably kept on rotating as it passed over my car and hopefully came close to landing on its feet (it happened at night so I couldn't see the landing out my rear view). At least it wasn't there and there was no blood on the road after I got turned around and back to the collision site.

[MaxMatt]

Different question:

basjoos, what is the road clearance of the AeroCivic? Did You lower it(How?) or are that just the panels that sit low?