Ugh.

But your ok at least

Yup. Besides being sore, it was like I had a personal force field or some shit dude. I think big 'Blue might have been pulling some crazy metaphysical mumbo jumbo for me on this one x.xv

Ugnffth!

800 pounds of cervine meat vs thin sheet metal...

Oh well. Maybe you at least made an easy meal for some wildlife in the area!

That thing took the radiator and bent it at an angle. With a split-second of contact and nearly 60 MPH of force. BENT a radiator like a friggin protractor! And besides a mangled neck, it looked like it would have gotten up and walked away like "WHAT!?" o.o;

Oh, I know. I've hit five deer and one elk in my career. (Truck driver.) But trust me, while they may get up and walk away, they never get very far. An impact of that magnitude will break bones, destroy tissue and rip open blood vessels.

If they just don't flat-out die on their own, after, they'll certainly be easy meat for the nearest predator. So nope. Even if they live, they seldom get very far.

Ah. This was the second time I've ever seen an elk in my life, so wasn't really sure what to expect. I've just heard rumors of how people would hit them, and they would just walk off. x.x

Well, either way, it's a shame about what happened to your van. I assume though, and hope, that it was a company vehicle and not your own!

What with insurance deductibles being what they are these days, that would be a very expensive affair indeed!

But also, on the plus side, it will count against your driving record as a 'Non-Preventable' accident. It won't raise your insurance rates or anything like that. It'll be a 'No-Fault' claim against insurance, too.

But most of all, it's just good you came out of it okay. Damage to the van sucks big time, but at least you were able to walk away.

Company van, so thankfully I don't have to worry about that stuff :)

Glad you're alright o.o; and jesus that things totaled.. Elk; the hulk of the animal world

Yeah, no shit x.x

Glad you okay!

Me too, thanks :D

shiit that was a close call hon :c

Yup! I tend to have close-calls with death every 4 or 5 months it seems.

That's gotta suck big time. The local news paper here uses vans like yours and they have had heavy duty bull bars custom made for the fronts of each of them for when they're delivering the paper. They normally start deliveries around midnight so it's still pitch black out. Being in the Adirondacks deer are the biggest problem here. I've had a friend tell me that one of the drivers literally made it back from delivering papers with a deer hanging out of the bull bars. Thankfully the bull bars did their job and soaked up an potential damage.

Yeah, this was at 3:30AM in an area with no street lights and no buildings, and it was slightly foggy but SUPER cloudy, so there was practically 0% visibility when my headlights lost power. I had to use flashlights just to see where I was walking. We SHOULD have bull bars.. the PDX driver has them, I don't see why the rest of us don't when we all have more deer and elk crossings then him :/

You could always get the company in trouble for lack of proper protection and poor vehicle maintenance. My father owns and drives fuel delivery trucks and he hit a deer with one of them at one point and caused the bumper to bend back to the driver side tire. It's amazing how such a medium sized animal can cause such damage to a vehicle 20x its' size. Though a bent bumper for a big truck is just minor damage but it's still something to think about. :)

I /could/, but I don't like to take that road, ya know? To many people get lawyer happy at the drop of a hat. I'm okay, they needed to replace it, it's going to get replaced now. In the end, they paid for the damages and I just lost a few hours and didn't complete my run. But my boss was really chill about it, and even said "We can buy new windshields. We can buy a new truck. We can't put YOU back together. You walked away out of this alive, let alone mostly unharmed, and that's the only thing we really care about". While alot of bosses might just say that because they're obligated to, Nick is a super cool guy, and I can tell he actually MEANT it with his heart, which is one of the reasons I don't want to get him in trouble. He's a good guy, trying to get the place running on a horribly tight budget.

At least he cares more about you than the van, that's always good to see. Out of curiosity what is it you do job wise besides obviously drive a van? I see a dump truck in the back there. :3

Oh that's just the wrecking yard it was towed to. I deliver windshields and mouldings across the Oregon coast at night :)

Oooooh. Interesting line of employment I must say. Good to know you're in one piece though. :3

Yeah, one of those jobs you never think exists until your working in it :p

There's a windshield place about a half hour away in the city but I don't think they do long distance delivery.

Good gods... I'm glad you're okay! Not surprised about the airbags; they're only designed to go off if you hit something of similar mass, otherwise the explosive force witch which they deploy would have injured you a lot more than the elk.

Well the van isn't that heavy, and the elk was probably about 800-1000 pounds. Soooo, it SHOULD have gone off. Especially when parts of the engine go INTO where the driver/passenger's legs are. That's enough impact it should have gone off for sure.

Depends where the sensors are located. That's still lighter than a car - the lightest of which start around 1800lbs. At any rate, you came out in one piece, which is all that matters. :) And hopefully that's a company vehicle, not yours.

Yep, it's a company car, and I'm good (outside a bit sore, heh)

Air bag sensors are in bumpers. You only hit the elk's legs with that. The grill and hood absorbed the impact of its body.

Fuck...that sucks balls man, company van i hope.
Almost sounds like what my dad had to pull back in '87, Fuse blew all the lights out on his Semi's cab in the middle of the night >_<, he had to drive 90 miles in pitch black with nothing but a maglight out the window to see (didnt even get dash light or cab lights, they all blew).

Ohyeah, company van. Personally, I would have just pulled over and waited for dawn if I was him. Especially with a Semi, that's nothing to fuck with. My dad is a semi driver, and he's told me some horror stories from his co-workers.

Cold load on a hard time frame, not to mention he has a rather >_> scrupulous work ethic (he would work even if he was half dead if he was given the choice).

Sounds like my dad x.x

damn dude that blows >_> the hell was that Elk made of?

It was made of ELK. Apparently, that's like bricks or something. n_u

Just very glad you are all right dear *hugs you tight*

*hugs* Ohyeah, I seem to skate around the reaper often enough I'm almost getting used to the Adrenalin it causes ._.

*squeezes* Just don't take any risks you can avoid dear.

I don't attempt to, but gravity, momentium, and sheer bad-luck tend to bring pallets of cider down from the sky, elk from the edge of a forest/mountain, and cancerous urathane rolls to explode out of presses x.x

Indeed, dear, indeed.

Yeah Deer are tough and dense fuckers. My sister hit one once and it almost destroyed her car. She had to drive down the mountain with that thing on her hood. On the bright side we ate well for a while :)

Well this was an elk, not a deer. And another person hit an elk in that area relatively close to the same time, and I dont think they made it x.x But Mazda Miata's aren't known for being very well armored :/

good your ok , few days ago one of my uncles had his car totally wrecked:/ , they are ok tho

glad to hear and see that your ok man.

i was doing some scrapping in the city i come around a blind corner at night and boom between 3 and 6 cop cars illegally parked facing the wrong way and no light's on and the cop's allover having a dam meet/greet. i nirey having a head on with 1 car piled in to a full parking lot treing to not hit anything in the dark. my firt question was shit did i pull in the wrong way on a 1 way street? I even went as far as walking back to the corner and looking for a sign stating it was a one-way street.as i am going up the sidewalk a car jest like me comes around the corner but no parking lout to pull in to do to i am in it lol guy came within inches mowing over a few cops and a car . to get in their cars and leave.i Expecting them to think I was drunk or something it took me 10 or 20 minutes to get out of that parking lot do to i had no way but to back out on to a blind road and people Coming around the corner.add to it the van i use you at night do to the factory window tint. good times;).man the cops acting like deer in headlights and they couldn't figure why I was so shaken up to running a few of them over and i was doing 20 km in a 50 zone;) the next guy was doing 50 so lite a lot closer to making a big mass. didn't see why I bothered pulling into the parking lot. His answer was driving a newer cop car doing something stupid like that. And it's the next best thing to winning the lotto.

good to hear you're alright. By the way.in the 90's . I was involved in a hit-and-run by a semi and the cop's wear a bit puzzled how if i was unconscious did i drive the remains of the vehicle. As far as I did for dropping it in the ditch lol misse aloput o crap

I am glad you are safe! And glad to know there are still awesome people out there!

Me too! They were so cool, they had a bed made for me before I even got there, even though the whole place was under heavy construction. Then the main guy pulled out a TV and DVD player while his fiance` got some movies ready for me :3

Dawww, super nice of them. you still have all of your kidneys, right? :p

Yup :) I slept with a dagger near my hand though, just encase. But yeah, they were totally cool :)

I'm happy to hear you are okay.

Just like so many others have said, I'm happy that you are OK!

Thanks :3