Roadkill: Avoiding a crash course
Published 5:00 pm Saturday, June 22, 2002
It’s a sickening feeling of fear and dread.
A deer walks out into the road in the middle of the night in front of a speeding car. With almost no time to react, a driver can only wonder if he or she will live through the inevitable collision and what the damage will be.
Every day and night, during every driving mile, South Whidbey Island drivers face the possibility of colliding with a deer. At minimum, one of these crashes will damage a car and kill the animal; at worst, a driver or passenger may be killed.
Now that it’s spring, these collisions are becoming more common. The evidence is in the number of deer carcasses showing up alongside the island’s roads. But the springtime fawning season is only part of a vehicular deer kill that stretches throughout the year.
“It’s pretty steady all year round,” said Ted Dempsey, a maintenance and operations superintendent for the state’s Department of Transportation.
Familiar with the island’s roads and its deer population, Dempsey said an average of two deer per week are killed on Highway 525 alone. It’s the job of Dempsey’s department to pick up and dispose of the animal carcasses along highway.
The situation is worse for the Island County Sheriff’s Office and the county’s road department. Called out to car-deer collisions, deputies are often faced with having to euthanize injured deer, and with assisting drivers injured in collisions. Lt. Evan Tingstad, commander of the sheriff’s South Whidbey precinct, said the calls for help in car-deer crashes are common.
“For the county roads, if I had to estimate, I’d say we have about five kills a week in the active periods — spring and then fall through early winter,” Tingstad said.
He said the risk of accidents increases during these seasons, even though hardly a week goes by during the entire year in which a deer doesn’t die on the road.
In addition to the stress of a car-deer accident, drivers are faced with financial losses as well. Public agencies, like the Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Transportation don’t keep close track of the cost of disposing of roadkill. But insurers are keenly aware of the cost, because an errant deer can cost them money.
“An accident with a deer can total a car,” said Barb Enberg,
a Freeland insurance agent with Farmers Insurance Group. “They can cause severe damage and come right through the windshield. Then it’s a question of who suffers more from the impact, the deer or the driver.”
Enberg said her office gets about three to four claims per year due to deer. She said the big problem areas on South Whidbey include East Harbor Road, Cultus Bay Road, several spots in Greenbank and the Possession Shores and Possession Point areas.
Some drivers know to be wary in these places, Enberg said, but not all.
“Residents there usually know a lot of deer are in the area, but visitors are not as aware,” she said.
Knowing is only half the battle. To stay safe, said Lt. Tingstad, drivers need to be alert and drive slowly.
“They know the deer are there, but they’re not on the lookout as they should be,” he said. “Number two, drivers should always look for the second deer. It’s the second deer that causes the accident.”
Tingstad said deer do not leap onto a road, as some drivers might believe. They walk onto the road, so some drivers don’t see the deer before it begins to cross. If that happens, drivers need to know how to get out of the way, fast. Tingstad said drivers taking evasive action should steer left, to avoid hitting oncoming traffic.
“It’s the better choice when a choice has to be made,” he said.
Some helpful solutions to the wildlife and automobile collision problem may be in store. Washington state has some experimental projects underway that could prove helpful — both for the wildlife and the motorists.
Marian Carey, a biologist with the state Department of Transportation, said she is currently looking at designs for wildlife “crossing structures” that would get deer across the road.
“We are studying building some wildlife crossing structures elsewhere in the state,” she said. “And there is a problem on Whidbey Island that we’re aware of.”
Other solutions are also on the table. In Sequim, the state has equipped many of the resident elk with electronic signal collars, collars that trigger flashing traffic signs when the animals near a road. The signal gives drivers time to slow down and avoid an accident.
Another innovative solution involves roadside laser beams as signal triggers.
Carey said the state is also looking into designing bridges and roads to allow safer passage for wild animals and motorists.
