Tami Fallon was scooting south on Highway 525 to the Clinton ferry in her new silver Honda Accord, on her way to a Mariners baseball game.
The sunroof was open; the radio was on. It was shaping up to be one wonderful afternoon.
Then came the crash.
“It jumped off the embankment and landed smack down on the front of my car,” Fallon said.
She didn’t see the deer until it was rolling across the hood of her car. The animal’s hooves smashed through the window on the driver’s side of the Honda, showering Fallon with glass.
“I had just rolled that window up. Had I not, it would have hit me right in the face,” she recalled.
Fallon slammed on the brakes and pulled over into the ferry waiting lane; the deer ran off. The deer, a four-point buck, was later found dead by someone at Dalton Realty beside a little creek nearby.
Fallon’s Honda was damaged to the tune of $6,000.
“I had not even made the second payment on my car yet,” she said.
Still, she figures she was lucky she wasn’t hurt.
Many aren’t so fortunate.
It’s been estimated that more than 200 people are killed in car crashes involving deer each year, and a 2006 study
at Michigan State University reports that insurance costs for such collisions total nearly $2 billion annually.
In Washington state, a more recent study said at least 14,969 deer were killed on state and federal highways between 2000 and 2004.
That same study, prepared by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, noted that two segments of Highway 525 on South Whidbey were in the top 10 locations in Western Washington for the number of deer killed in collisions.
The study, released in May 2008, was based on records of deer and elk carcasses that were removed from state highways. The number of actual collisions involving deer and elk, however, are considerably higher than what is reported, said Dave Chesson of the Washington Department of Transportation.
Chesson said the department’s information is based on collision reports from the Washington State Patrol, which often don’t match the number of carcasses picked up by WSDOT maintenance crews.
“Our sense is that the problem may be worse than what gets reported,” Chesson noted. “In other words, a motorist might hit a deer and drive off without contacting the Patrol and filing a report.”
According to WSDOT, the number of collisions with wildlife that kill or injure drivers is fairly consistent.
Between 2003 and 2007, the number of injuries in Washington ranged from 1,100 to 1,305, with an annual average of 1,191 injuries. About two people are killed each year in the state from accidents involving wildlife.
Researchers have tried to determine how many accidents actually occur each year on roadways across the state by studying the number of animal carcasses picked up by road crews.
In the most recent five years for which WSDOT has data, Chesson said there have been more carcass pickups on Highway 525, per road mile, than Highway 20. Between 2003 and 2007, there were 391 deer carcasses reported as removed from state highways on Whidbey: 145 from Highway 20 and 246 from Highway 525.
But many experts acknowledge the numbers are considerably lower than the actual amount of accidents.
“We aren’t the only ones who remove animals from the road,” Chesson pointed out.
Island County road crews also pick up dead animals along county roads. In 2008, road crews retrieved 119 deer carcasses in the county, and the year before, 63.
This year’s numbers are on pace to surpass last year’s tally; 39 carcasses were picked up during the first three months of 2009.
The number of deer-vehicle collisions, however, tend to rise in October and November.
Some of the highest numbers of retrievals are reported by the county’s road shop in Bayview, which has a coverage area that extends just past Fish Road in Freeland (the Coupeville road shop picks up carcasses north of Woodard Avenue).
The county tracks the number of deceased wildlife removed from county roads by preparing a “wildlife roadkill report” each month.
According to the roadkill reports submitted through March 2009, only eight dead deer were picked up by Bayview road crews. Last year, the number totaled 39.
Lance Landquist, South Whidbey Road Shop supervisor, said the actual number of retrievals was higher, because crews sometimes don’t report every animal picked up.
Still, Landquist said he didn’t sense this year’s numbers were outpacing those seen during the past few years.
Many deer were killed in collisions during severe storms in recent winters.
“Windstorms make them stand out on the road,” Landquist said.
Many experts say the number of carcasses removed from roadways doesn’t come close to the actual number of deer-vehicle collisions that happen each year. The 2008 Department of Fish and Wildlife study acknowledges the number of road kills that actually occur is unknown. And a 1990 study in New York estimated that for every deer killed in a collision, another five went unreported.
“The vast majority of car-deer accidents are not reported,” agreed Ralph Downes, enforcement officer for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife on Whidbey.
Downes said the number of actual collisions could be close to twice the number of carcasses that are recovered, and he called his estimate conservative.
“I think I am being more than generous. If the county and state combined is 300, the number is at least 500,” he said.
Downes also noted that WSDOT or county road crews only pick up animals that are in the roadway or in the rights of way, and wounded deer can travel quite a distance before going down.
“Often times they don’t go right down. They skedaddle,” Downes said. “A good percentage of those animals don’t die immediately; they go off and either survive or die somewhere else.”
Those incidents are not going into the state’s database, he said.
Even though the information is incomplete, Whidbey Island is a hot spot for deer-vehicle accidents.
According to the 2008 study, three sections of state highways on Whidbey are in the top 10 for the highest number of deer-vehicle collisions in Western Washington.
One spot is on Highway 525 between Bayview and Freeland, the stretch of road between mileposts 15 and 17. The other high-collision spot on the South End is at milepost 25, just north of Freeland. More than 17 deer-vehicle accidents were reported at both those locations in 2000-2004.
The other danger zone on Whidbey is on Highway 20, between mileposts 17 and 21, where roughly 19 accidents were reported during the same time frame.
According to a Record review of monthly roadkill reports from Island County, and the first six months of 911 dispatch logs in 2009, other stretches of roadway on the South End are treacherous, too.
The roadways where multiple deer-car collisions were reported, or deer carcasses were retrieved from the side of the road, include: North Bluff Road, Smugglers Cove Road, Mutiny Bay Road, Woodard Avenue, East Harbor Road, Goss Lake Road, Bayview Road, Maxwelton Road, Langley Road and Cultus Bay Road.
The county has placed deer-crossing warning signs at approximately 30 locations on roads across the county, said Connie Bowers, a county traffic engineer.
Putting up many more signs may not help, Bowers said, because “they tend to be ignored.”
Add to that, the ones that are already up don’t seem to be making an impact.
“I don’t find them very effective tools, because you still see the deer being hit there. It doesn’t eliminate the problem, or reduce it significantly,” Bowers said.
Part of the reason is that drivers can be inattentive. Deer can be unpredictable, too, darting out into traffic and then stopping.
More cars on the road also mean more chances for a deer to be struck by a vehicle, said Downes of Fish and Wildlife.
“We have more and more cars on the highway; there’s a number that’s definitely going up,” Downes said.
“I would guess the car numbers are going up faster than the deer numbers.”
Suggestions to cut down the number of accidents, made in the 2008 Department of Fish and Wildlife report, include lowering speed limits, better managing property next to roadways to reduce the amount of forage and cover that attract deer, and reducing the number of deer through sport hunting.
Downes, however, said the state has long allowed additional hunting opportunities on Whidbey Island, an area that lacks a bear or cougar population that could help keep deer numbers in check.
“It’s almost a non-preditorial situation. Coyotes would be the only potential predator, and they are not very effective at controlling the deer population,” he said.
Whidbey was once a draw for hunters. But Downes said it has been “harder and harder” to use hunting as a population control on Whidbey Island.
The number of reasons is long, and includes the transfer of lands once used for hunting to parkland, the shift in demographics of people who live on Whidbey and changes in attitudes toward hunting, and fewer owners of large tracts of private property who will give permission for hunters to use their land.
The ongoing controversy over hunting on Whidbey has led some property owners to no longer allow access to their land to hunters.
That means fewer big-game hunters are hunting on the island.
“Without question the number is going down,” Downes said. “The numbers are way down.”
“I’ve been on the island for 20 years; I’ve seen that trend change. Little by little, every year it diminishes,” he added.
“There’s less access, more issues with trespass.”
With fewer hunters, and no real predators, deer that aren’t hit by vehicles share a similar fate, he said.
“We often joke about our area as probably having the greatest per capita of deer dying of old age,” Downes said.
