Oh deer! Student drivers at risk as whitetail population increases

By Ashton Smith, staff writer
Posted on November 8, 2007

JMU junior Tom Yannucci knows how unpredictable deer can be.

“I was driving on the back roads in Harrisonburg… and the deer just ran out from one of the fields,” he said.  “Luckily I saw it and swerved.  I didn’t hit the deer and it ran off.”

Whitetail deer have entered breeding season, giving students one more reason to be cautious while driving. 

“It’s a bad time of the year for deer and for drivers because they [the deer] are on the move,” said Patty Ahmed Al-Jemel, a car insurance agent for LD&B Insurance Agency.

In 2005 Virginia ranked seventh in states with the highest number of crashes involving deer, according to Drive Smart Virginia, a nonprofit partnership founded by 85 percent of automobile insurance companies. According to a survey taken in 2005 by the Deer Management Plan, a plan created by the commonwealth to deal with deer increase, over four percent of Virginians had an accident involving a deer while driving or riding.

Although no definite data for the 2007-08 year has been released, the Deer Management Plan for 2006 projected 43,453 deer-vehicle claims for all insurance companies in the commonwealth in 2006.

Deer-vehicle collisions can be costly. The management plan projected that the average cost of damage in 2003 was around $2,530 per accident.  The total costs for the combined year was around $13 million.   

“[If you hit a deer] you would make a comprehensive claim, not a collision claim,” Ahmed Al-Jemel said.

While she said that this may be confusing, her company has not seen many JMU students so far this year.  This could be due to the fact that the season begins Nov. 17 and lasts until the second week of January.

“Deer are migrating more towards cities, such as Harrisonburg, from West Virginia because of the lack of food there,” Ahmed Al-Jemel said.

With deer vehicle collisions occurring more frequently, Drive Smart Virginia warns everyone to be more alert while driving, especially during the early morning and around dusk.

Sometimes you can do everything right and still wind up with vehicle damage.

“I was driving and at least three deer jumped out in front of me,” junior Kristin Otte said.  “I missed them all, but then I heard a boom and a deer had run into my car.”