These wretched critters also tend to travel in threes. Most people seem not to understand.
I often see the first deer from a reasonable distance as it crosses the road. No problem, since it has crossed? No way.
That just means it is going to be a close-call for the second deer and a likely crash with the third one.
Many times I have saved myself by stopping and then crawling by the crossing deer path. Following drivers get all frustrated at losing 0.45 seconds of their life; I am waiting for the one to pass me and hit the deer. That should more than make up for the 0.45 seconds.
It never ceases to amaze me how many drivers don't think "
Why has that guy in front of me stopped?" before impatiently barrelling past and getting themselves into trouble. It seems that there is a whole class of drivers whose impatience overrides the common sense idea that perhaps the guy at the front of the queue can see more than the impatient guy in the middle of the queue.
This happens to me every other week when I get to the following bit of road in my journey back from the supermarket. I will be driving North here:
I will get to the point just at the bottom of the photo. There will be a bus at the bus stop and traffic queuing to turn at the end of the road, so I will stop at the very bottom of the picture and wait (on the left remember). There's no room for two cars and a bus abreast so it's sensible to wait there until the bus moves or the traffic clears, yielding to anyone who wants to pass the bus. I can see the junction to the right, the traffic trying to pass the bus and the queue to turn at the end of the road; people behind me can't, but
ought to be able to figure out that
I can and that I am reacting to what I can see.
Every other time I do this some impatient unthinking muppet will pull out of the queue behind me and go past on the wrong side of the road, where they can't see the oncoming traffic (there's a bloody great London bus in the way!), they can't see vehicles in the side road to the right, in fact they can't see anything except the vehicles that they are passing and perhaps the additional hazard of vehicles parked on the right. There then ensues a blaring of horns and slamming on of brakes when someone coming from behind the bus (quite correctly because they can see me yield to them) meets the idiot who has just passed me on the wrong side of the road with no forward visibility and who has actively hidden themselves from anybody coming from the other direction.
This wouldn't happen if they could remember, or even might have heard the Golden Rule: "
Drive at such a speed that you can stop, on your own side of the road, within the distance you can see is clear.". It's not complicated, it's easy to understand, it's not difficult to do, but it seems beyond the ken of every other driver I meet. It's the daily encountering of this kind of idiocy that has taken all the pleasure out of daily driving for me over the past few years.