Gloom!

[Tulpen]

I'm across in the UK at the moment and, yesterday, I was driving from Aviemore to Ayrshire over the Perthshire hills. It was a winding road and I was only doing about 35mph when a deer jumped over a stone wall and landed in the middle of the road. As it landed, I hit it.......I had no time to swerve or brake.

The deer was winded and, after about 15 mins got up and legged it. I was really pleased that I hadn't injured it. When I checked the car, it seemed OK with only the impact zone being indicated by a slight crazing of the paint on the bumper.

However, I've just done a really close inspection and things aren't so good. A couple of bits of trim had come loose but they were easy to fix. The driver's side foglight (LHD, remember) had popped out of its housing but I refitted that. The worrying bits are the cracks which are at the rounded apertures for the foglights and trim. The impact point is pretty obvious and I'll have the rear of the bumper checked in Holland to see if there has been any delamination behind the impact zone. I believe that, if the safety integrity of the bumper has been compromised (delamination or cracking) this can cause a failure in the MOT.

The other bad point is that the deer's horns or hooves appear to have impacted the front of the bonnet which will mean a bonnet re-spray.......at least.

The good news is that the deer and ourselves are OK. I've attached some pics - excuse the flies..........

 

[Malc]

.......... sorry to hear your news .....  what a shock

Similar happened to me in about 1969 ( I was 19 ) with my brand new Hillman Imp, at night driving along, pitch black in the country, a deer jumped over the hedge from a field, kicked my passenger door , jumped over the car then across the road and over the next hedge and off across the field ........  me and the gf ( taking her home after an interesting evening ! ) were totally shocked, huge dent in the door and wondered what on earth had happened !

Never happened since thank heavens

Malc

[PCM]

Sorry to hear that ...

Deer where we live.

So I have one of these ( http://www.deerwhistles.co.uk/  ). Whether it works or not, who knows, but it's small and unobtrusive... and cheap.