TULSA, Okla. — With more deer out and about as deer season gets underway in Oklahoma, law enforcement agencies say the number deer vs. car crashes they respond to are on the rise, and they have some tips to help keep them to a minimum.
Tulsa police told FOX23 a deer is likely what led to a rollover crash in north Tulsa Thursday morning.
A 20-year-old woman was ejected from her car and a passenger injured as well after police say she told them she was trying to swerve out of the way of something in the road on 56th Street north.
Police at the scene said it’s likely, that “something” was a deer.
“It’s deer season… We’re surrounded right now by kind of a rural area. There’s a good chance that she probably saw a deer and swerved,” Sgt. Benjamin Elliott with the Tulsa Police Department said.
When it comes to preventing or lessening the severity of a deer vs. car crash, the experts at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office say it’s all about keeping vigilant of your surroundings, and not overcorrecting.
“Drivers don’t need to just be focused dead on what’s ahead of them,” TCSO spokesperson Casey Roebuck said. “You also need to be focused on the full horizon, because a lot of times they’re gonna come out of a tree line, they’re gonna come out of a field.”.
Roebuck said often times, if you see on deer, it’s likely more are around, and you should anticipate they may follow each other.
She said there are some common mistakes drivers make when they encounter deer that can often mean the difference between a crash that can be walked away from, and a potentially life-altering crash.
“If a deer does jump out in front of your car, do not swerve,” Roebuck said. “Hit your brakes, and if you can’t avoid the deer, don’t swerve.”
She says hitting a deer with your car head on, while not ideal, is a much safer option to swerving because cars are built to withstand front end impacts.
“We would much rather you have a lot of front-end damage to your car, rather than swerve at highway speed and roll because you could be inured and killed in that accident, or you could hit another driver.”
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According to the Oklahoma Insurance Department (OID), October and November are the most active months of the year for deer crashes. But Roebuck says the threat is there for drivers no matter what time of year it is.
“It’s not just in the fall. This is when they’re particularly active, but you can have a deer collision any time of the year in Oklahoma,” she said. “Here in Oklahoma this is just something that drivers really need to be aware of.”
Citing data collected in 2011 by the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office, the OID reported 467 deer crashes happened in Oklahoma that year, resulting in two deaths and 184 injuries.
They reported 60 percent of those crashes happened at night.
Roebuck says one of the easiest things you can do to potentially save your life in a crash is to put your seatbelt on.
“You have a much better chance of surviving that crash if you’re buckled up,” Roebuck said.
Tulsa Police say the driver in Thursday morning’s crash was ejected. Officers on the scene told FOX23 nearly every time a person is ejected from their car in a crash, it’s because they were not wearing a seatbelt.
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