3 seconds decides who goes down "Deer-vs-Bike" - Swanton Rd

[spdt509]

i don't buy the 'feeding times'anymore after my encounter with a big a$$ deer on Sharp park,330 in the afternoon,on a clear day.even though i was in my cage,it still scare the crap outta me,the only thing that kept me from hitting it was the car next to me was two car lengths ahead and braked suddenly,buying me a full second to act.....

 

[Brown81]

My closest call with a deer was in downtown Danville on my lunch break and it was like 90 degrees out.

There was no time to do anything but shit myself.

Some dude driving the other way was like "WOW!!! You are lucky!!!"

 

[Gary J]

I wanna know who pissed Swanton off, and how many sacrifices she will need before she calms down.

So true Gary!

After only having had one rider go down and get hurt on Swanton Rd, over many years of riding with other riders on that venue, it's pretty weird to have 2 separate incidents (one gravel induced, one deer induced) ...... resulting in Life Flights out ..... over just a couple of weeks!

Hopefully the Sausage Creature has been sufficiently fed at this point, and things will return to fun and uneventful riding for a long time to come now!

 

[Gnarly Cranium]

We'll have to keep running them over for millions of years to counteract the previous millions of years of natural selection that worked in the opposite direction. Deer are designed to escape predators-- they dodge randomly, to avoid an enemy that's trying to anticipate their movements. They are NOT designed to avoid a vehicle traveling in a straight line trying to mind its own damn business. A deer that is calm and accustomed to roads may be able to rationally process vehicles as obstacles to avoid, and wait its turn to cross the road, but the more surprised/frightened they are, the more likely they are to pull some dumbshit psycho stunt at the last possible instant and charge directly at you on a collision course. Similar thing with squirrels, rabbits, and other prey animals.

I guess what surprises me the most about this particular incident, is how hard the bike went down, especially with such a small deer. I recall a helmet cam video from a bike that was nailed by an adult deer that slammed directly into the front end from the side, hard enough that the deer was spread across a big stretch of the road, but the bike only jerked and kept on going. I wonder what the difference in angles was-- although speed probably has a lot to do with it also. Probably most of you have seen this one:
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Similar here, the bike just keeps on rolling while pieces of it fly off.
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This guy on the other hand does a somersault on impact. It looks like he was probably pretty heavy on the brakes.
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So... moral of the story... if you're gonna hit a deer, do it at 85mph? Er...


I hope your buddy heals up fast, Gary-- am glad he's okay!

 

[ratpick]

Just how thin the "roll-the-dice" line is that can separate between being a deer/bike collision statistic, or not, was (unfortunately) brought home again on a post 4th of July holiday ride on Swanton Road ...... in the Santa Cruz mountains.

.

Keep your eyes open, expect the unexpected, and keep a four-leaf clover in the pockets of your leathers for luck. That's about the best you can do.

Yup,happened to me 9 years ago.I was on Cieniga rd near Hollister Hills on the way home from a great all day ride.Cruising at the speed limit a deer came out of the bushes right in front of me and down I go,had about a 1 second to react.Totalled my 1 year old zx9 and pretty much beat the hell out of me(concussion,bruised ribs,swear I broke my wrist and collarbone but xrays said no etc...).
Keep a sharp eye out,little bastards are everywhere.

 

[sliverstorm]

Notice in the first two videos the deer seems to have struck the side of the bike. At speed, the bike wants to stand up, so if the deer doesn't have too much momentum, you shouldn't go over.

In the last video, the guy seems to have hit the deer straight on with his front wheel, in addition to what seems to be strong braking.

 

[Gary J]

This guy on the other hand does a somersault on impact. It looks like he was probably pretty heavy on the brakes.

That's (getting flipped over the handlebars) EXACTLY what I foresaw was going to happen when I broadsided the deer at very high speed, in my first deer/bike incident.

Thankfully (for my survival) I somehow had the fortitude to make a last moment split-second decision to get my body low and back on the bike, brace myself, get totally back off the brakes, and well into the throttle just before the moment of impact. The intent (and outcome) was to use the bike's larger mass and kinetic energy to act like a battering ram to plow as much of the deer's mass out of the way as possible .... before my body reached it.

I'm 100% sure that those actions are what minimized the damage to the bike, enabled it to stay upright for quite some distance past the point of impact, and most importantly survive as the outcome from that horrific high-speed collision moment.

That versus a normal survival instinct reaction of being off the gas, and/or on the front brake hard trying to keep slowing down all the way to impact. A set of actions that will put the bike into a very vulnerable position in already trying to do a stoppie and pivot back-over-front around the leverage point of the front wheel. That's exactly what appears to have been the cause-n-effect events that occurred in that one video.

Each deer/bike encounter is unique, based on a thousand possible variables that may exist. As such, there's no "one recipe for all" combination of rider actions that can be pulled from a book on how to minimize the negative outcome from all such encounters.

Obviously if there's any combination of actions that will result in avoiding the impact all together, that's the one to take. In a case where conditions exist where it's impossible to avoid the collision, is where the ability to pick the best "first-loser" combination of actions becomes the ultimate challenge!

In the case of a worst-case, high-speed, broadside impact like I was facing in that incident, the combination of steps mentioned above proved from real world experience to be the right formula for survival.

 

[ThumperX]

When I had my encounter with one of these little fucks I did the 10 point somersault dismount then the asphalt rag doll for 89 feet.
I think so much depends on WHERE you strike the deer. If you hit them right behind the ribs you eviscerate them. Messy but usually you can ride home. If they decide to whirl and come at you you usually break their neck and do a dead man's stop into their chest. This results in the fully acrobatic bike effect. This is what I did. Luckily neither the bike or myself were totaled and the deer took one for the team.
Another thing is make certain to leave the deer remnants on the bike and hopefully someone will take photos of the deer so there is no question about liability.