The deer bounced off our minivan before we even saw it in the snowy, late autumn twilight. The next thing we knew, it was darting into the woods on the Superior side of Highway 61 just north of Betty’s Pies.
“Textbook DVC,” says Raphael Stern, using the acronym for Deer Vehicle Collision, when I describe the crash to him.
Stern, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering at the University of Minnesota, is a researcher on a Minnesota Department of Transportation–funded project at the U studying, essentially, roadkill.
It’s not actually the plot to a macabre movie script; the goal is to find patterns that could help figure out when, why, and how cars and deer collide. In Minnesota, about 2,000 collisions with deer are reported every year, but researchers suspect the real number is at least 10 times that. State Farm estimated the number of animal-vehicle collisions at over 40,000 last year in Minnesota alone.
“There’s no question that they’re underreported,” says Ron Moen, the University of Minnesota Duluth biologist who does the actual driving and looking for deer carcasses on the sides of roads. “The real question is how much they’re underreported.”
It’s a problem that can seem too big to solve. “We know we have a lot of DVCs out there, and if you throw all the points on the map, it seems like it’s happening everywhere,” says Christopher Smith from MnDOT. “The hope is that some of these analyses do find some patterns.”
With a more robust data set, researchers hope to pinpoint hot spots, the roads where deer and cars collide the most often. MnDOT could then roll out solutions to prevent crashes. The only way to get that data, though, appears to be slow and painstaking. So, Moen drives 500 miles every two to three weeks. Pointing his Ford F-150 or Honda CR-V down Highway 53, he drives at about 45 miles per hour, training his eyes toward the side of the road for deer carcasses. It takes two or three days, and he does it in silence.
Looking for deer is “the sole function,” he says, “so you want to pay attention. A DVC on a road is one thing, but 5–10 feet off the road is another thing.”
When he spots a deer carcass, he pulls up right alongside it if he can, identifies the spot with GPS, notes whether it was a fawn or adult, and sometimes snaps a picture with his cell phone. When he drove the route this spring after the snow melted, he realized all the crashes that had happened over the winter were literally frozen in time. (He offered to share the photos. I politely declined.)
Moen may miss a few carcasses that people pick up, either for human consumption or for dog food, but he says it’s a small percentage that shouldn’t throw off his statistics.
Deer vs. cars
A 1938 National Parks poster makes an appeal to motorists: “Don’t kill our wildlife” with an image of two deer caught in bright yellow headlights.
Since then, the primary concern regarding DVCs has shifted away from preserving lives of deer to preserving lives of humans and protecting vehicles. The number of deer killed by cars in Minnesota is vastly less than the 130,000-plus deer killed by hunters each year. The economic cost of DVCs is about $20 million per year for accidents that are reported, according to Moen.
And between 2016 and 2020, 18 Minnesotans died from collisions with deer (15 of those people were riding motorcycles). Some states are worse. Most recently, West Virginia led the country in wildlife-vehicle crashes—but Minnesota is a consistent top-10 finisher and currently sits ninth on the list. Underreporting is prevalent nationwide; Stern estimates 60–90 percent don’t get reported. Collisions in rural areas are least likely to be reported, since wait times for law enforcement are shorter in cities and rural residents stave off potential damage by outfitting their front bumpers with grille guards.
Data from other states isn’t perfectly transferable, Stern says. Every state has a different type of wildlife population and a different distribution of people, he points out.
“My understanding is deer don’t like being in the road; it’s more a matter of necessity,” he says.
But some Minnesota roads have the relatively unique attribute of being tasty to deer: The animals love to lick roads that have been salted for ice.
There are a few consistencies, however: Higher speeds generally result in higher rates of wildlife crashes. And DVCs do tend to occur more often in the fall and spring, at dusk and dawn, when deer are most active. (Thus, our “textbook crash.”)
As the data rolls in, Stern’s job is to analyze different factors, including the width of the road, how much the road twists and turns, speed limits, where rivers flow and bridges create crossings, and how close the road is to trees and other vegetation.
Once he identifies a factor that contributes to a hot spot, countermeasures can be applied there and to similar roads.
Solutions
Such measures could include obstacles that divert deer in a certain direction, like fencing or other infrastructure that encourages deer to stay away from roads. Underpasses or culverts for wildlife, for example, help deer get from one side of a road to the other without coming into contact with cars.
“Those things are very expensive to implement, though, so we need to focus those efforts into the areas where they’re most needed,” Smith says.
Ideally, the data would pinpoint details on quarter-mile segments of a corridor that’s up for renovation, Stern says. If MnDOT could concentrate efforts on the worst of those segments, that would “greatly diminish” the number of crashes, he says.
Whatever the solution, MnDOT wants to avoid passing responsibility to the driver.
“A driver’s reaction times are usually not good enough to avoid some of those impacts,” Smith says. “We want to do what we can do to remove the critters from the roadway so that people can focus on driving, not on dodging wildlife.”
The team has another year of data
collection to go before figuring out what works best where. For now, though, there seems to be absolute consensus on one thing that does not work: yellow deer crossing signs.
“You never see a deer by them, so people get complacent,” Moen says.
Smith confirms that MnDOT is removing many roadway signs that don’t provide critical information, including the deer caution signs.
“We know that people get habituated to them, especially if they’re not seeing critters near them,” he says. “The signs are not having any meaningful impact.” And in Minnesota, you’d need them on just about every mile of every road if you were to use them correctly, Stern says.
“With the exception of a couple of residential streets in our larger urban areas, pretty much every mile of every road is prone to deer,” he says. “From a hunter’s perspective, that’s good. From a driver’s perspective? It’s risky.”
How to Avoid Deer Crashes (according to Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety)
- Drive at safe speeds and always buckle up.
- Be especially cautious between 6 and 9 pm.
- Use high beams as much as possible at night.
- Don’t swerve to avoid a deer. Swerving can cause motorists to lose control and travel off the road or into oncoming traffic.
- Motorcyclists: Avoid night and low-light riding periods. A rider’s best response when encountering a deer is to use both brakes for maximum braking and to keep eyes and head up. If a crash is imminent, and there is enough space to swerve around the deer without leaving the roadway, use maximum braking and, just before impact, attempt a swerve in the opposite direction the deer is traveling. Riders are encouraged to wear full-face helmets and full protective gear to prevent injury or death in a crash. High-visibility gear can help other drivers see you better.
- Don’t count on deer whistles or deer fences to deter deer from crossing roads.
- Watch for the reflection of deer eyes and for deer silhouettes on the shoulder of the road. If anything looks slightly suspicious, slow down.
- Slow down in areas known to have a large deer population—such as areas where roads divide agricultural fields from forest land.
- Deer do unpredictable things. Honk to urge deer to leave the road. Stop if the deer stays on the road; don’t try to go around it.
What to Do If You Hit a Deer
- If you’d like to make an insurance claim, call the local police department.
- Any Minnesota resident may make use of a road-killed animal by contacting a law enforcement officer. An authorization permit will be issued allowing the individual to lawfully possess the deer.
- If a deer is struck but not killed by a vehicle, keep a distance, as deer may recover and move on. If a deer does not move on or poses a public safety risk, report the incident to a DNR conservation officer or other local law enforcement agency.