this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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I hit a deer on the highway in the middle of the night going about 80mph. I smelled the failed airbag charge and proceeded to drive home without stopping. By the time I stopped, I would never have been able to find the deer. If your vehicle isn't disabled, what's the big deal about stopping?
I've stuck two deer and my car wasn't disabled either time. My daughter hit one and totaled our van. She stopped.
That said, fuck Musk.
You're supposed to stop and report it so they can come and get it so no one hits it and ends up more squishy then intended.
No one was hitting it. It ran into the tall weeds (not far, I'll wager). I couldn't have found it. Had it been in the road I'd have called it in.
Whether or not a human should stop seems beside the point. Autopilot should immediately get the driver to take back control if something unexpected happens, and stop if the driver doesn't take over. Getting into an actual collision and just continuing to drive is absolutely the wrong behavior for a self-driving car.
Maybe drive a little slower at night. If you can't spot and react to animals on your path, you won't able to react when it's a human
Great on paper but literally not okay to slow down to 35 mph on the freeway ... Where most wild animals are hit at night.
Nobody is asking you to go at 35 mph. But going 60 mph instead of 80 mph means that your stopping distance will be nearly half and you will have almost twice the amount of time to react.
https://www.automotive-fleet.com/driver-care/239402/driver-care-know-your-stopping-distance
Have you hit a deer before or almost hit them in the dark? Yes absolutely 60mph will shorten your stopping distance and reaction time but not nearly enough. Even at 35mph people hit deer all the time because they typically jump out in front. But much faster than 35mph and even standing still in the middle of the road they're tough to see and stop for. 60mph, not a chance.
I haven't hit a deer, not even come close since they aren't a problem in my country. You are most probably right and i have seen videos of deer just jumping onto the road at the last second which causes an unavoidable accident. My viewpoint is that when you hit a creature(animal or human) at 80mph, they are most certainly dead. If you hit them at 60, they might survive but be gravely wounded. If are able to react and slow down before contact to about 30, they will be hurt but at least they have a much better chance of the survival. Somehow going at same speeds during the day and during the night seems very risky
It was an expressway. There were no lights other than cars. You're not wrong, had a human sprinted at 20mph across the expressway in the dark, I'd have hit them, too. That being said, you're not supposed to swerve and I had less than a second to react from when I saw it. It was getting hit and there was nothing I could've done.
My point was more about what happened after. The deer was gone and by the time I got to the side of the road I was probably about 1/4 mile away from where I struck it. I had no flashlight to hunt around for it in the bushes and even if I did I had no way of killing it if it was still alive.
Once I confirmed my car was drivable I proceeded home and called my insurance company on the way.
The second deer I hit was in broad daylight at lunch time going about 10mph. It wasn't injured. I had some damage to my sunroof. I went to lunch and called my insurance when I was back at the office.
I am neither blaming you nor critiquing your actions. In fact I agree that we should not swerve. I was just making an observation that driving slightly slower in low visibility might help by giving you more time to notice an obstruction and brake while provide also providing more time for the obstruction to react and clear the road. At least very least, people might slow down enough so that the crash is no longer fatal to the person or animal being crashed into
If you're just careening down the highway at 80, you're not really giving your car a fair chance to let you know that it's really in a disabled state now are you?
It's just common sense that after a major impact you should evaluate the safety of continuing in your current state. Stopping and doing the bare minimum of just looking at your car would be the first step of that process.