Watch out for white-tailed deer when you drive. They're pretty, they're brazen, and they're clueless.
Deer have become a real danger on North Carolina roads. Last year, drivers reported a record 19,693 collisions with deer, about 9.2percent of all crashes statewide, the UNC Highway Safety Research Center says.
Even careful drivers are caught by surprise when deer blunder across the road. Driving east on U.S. 64 near Jordan Lake one night, Bob Lohr kept an eye on several deer in the westbound lanes.
"There must have been a deer in the median that I didn't see until it was in front of my car," said Lohr, who lives in West Raleigh. "Never had time to hit the brakes."
His Nissan wagon was totaled. The radiator was bent into a U-shape. Luckily, Lohr was not injured.
Crashes kill uncounted deer each year -- and people are hurt, too. Deer crashes have killed 18 people and injured 3,218 more in North Carolina since 2006, according to the state Department of Transportation.
Larry Van Voorhis of Raleigh was teaching high-performance driving on a West Virginia race track 13 years ago when a deer ran into his speeding car. He still bears the effects of his serious injuries.
"He now has a face of titanium plates and Teflon slings holding his eyeballs in place," said his wife, Karen.
Half of all deer crashes are reported during October through December, most between dusk and dawn. Experts say hunting and mating seasons help explain the heavy concentration in the fall.
But deer can be reckless pedestrians in broad daylight, any time of the year.
Deborah McRae of Wake Forest was driving on N.C. 98 in northern Wake County at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday when a deer hit the front right side of her Escalade. The deer was killed, and the car repairs will cost $6,800.
As she sat in a friend's car on the roadside, McRae saw more deer streaming back and forth across the highway.
Suzanne Porter was pulling away from a stoplight on Fordham Boulevard in Chapel Hill on a sunny Saturday in May, just before noon, when drivers ahead of her stopped to let a few deer cross the road.
She was going less than 15 mph when another deer leaped across the hood of her Subaru.
"It was a brown blur passing over my hood, and then my windshield went," said Porter of Chapel Hill. "It just slammed the side of its body into the glass, and I think a couple of hooves scraped the hood. And it kept going across the parking lot."
Porter cut her hands on the broken windshield glass, but she's glad the deer got away. Now she's extra careful.
"I horseback-ride multi times a week in the country, and I'm often driving home at twilight," Porter said. "Now if I see deer, I don't assume they will stay where they are. I wait for the deer to cross and then wait for the other ones, too."
What else can we do?
State Farm Insurance says the average car in North Carolina has one chance in 150 of colliding with a deer this year. That's better than West Virginia, where the odds are 1 in 39.
Take your car to Hawaii, State Farm says, if you want to enjoy the best odds against a deer crash, 1 in 9,931.
N.C. 54 smoothed over
The Road Worrier reported two weeks ago that an unfinished paving job left lots of bumps and hazards on a busy section of N.C. 54 in Durham, between N.C. 751 and N.C. 55.
DOT has finished its repaving work there, and the road is smooth now.
