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Deer Collision - Availibily of parts issue

So, two weeks after picking up the Tesla and only 600 miles on her, I get T-Boned by a deer at 6:15 am on the way to work.
I was on a country road, rounding a curve, deer darts out of the tree line and thump. Sounded like I was pelted with a few sacks of potatoes.

The photos show the rear quarter panel damage, with deer hair in the wheel. At the body shop, they found a cracked rear bumper, dents in the passenger front and rear doors. The little bastard bounced all the way down the side of the car. I guess this is better then it going through the windshield. The rat with antlers, got up and ran away, so no deer burgers.

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I have State Farm and this qualifies as an 'Act of God' so my deductible is $200. The body shop estimate is approximately $3600. The shop is Criswell Collision Center in Annapolis. They are the preferred repair shop of the Rockville Tesla service center. I Took the car right in. Since the car is new, State Farm just went with the estimate as written since they have no data on the car in their database. They started repairs right away, they have a Tesla charging cable to keep the car charged. High-end shop, got the tour and saw a few $100K Audis being repaired.

Interestingly, there were 3 other Teslas in the shop, one in for delivery/transport damage, another smashed up in the rear really bad and one for paint cleanup.

Two weeks in, all is done pending a bracket to attach the bumper. Tesla is pulling the part off the assembly line and sending it to the shop. So I will hopefully get the car back next week. Just in time for the first car payment. :biggrin:

Anyway, I am starting a new group:

T.O.A.D -- Telsa Owners Against Deer
My friend has hit four already in his new Charger, another totaled a $70K Porsche after 2 weeks of ownership. Ahhhh. I never had any problems with Deer with my Truck or on my motorcycles.

Criswell and Tesla Rockville have been excellent in getting the car repaired. I know I will now be afraid to drive her again. Currently driving the 13 year old Sequoia -- total opposite end of the car spectrum.


p.s. On another note, Penfed's web site now has a pic of a Tesla on the Auto loan advertisement.
 
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Now if MobilEye could add a sensor to detect Deer, that would be a billion dollar product. Bottom line, you can't prevent the damn deer strikes. A friend had one jump onto the hood of his truck as he was driving down his lane going 5 mph.

Tesla is definitely looking at the car to see the type of damage the deer made and how well the Aluminum body held up.
 
Detecting deer is one thing, determining which ones are going to remain stationary on the side of the road vs play with traffic is entirely a different problem.

Living on the edge of the countryside in Raleigh NC, we have deer in our neighborhood and surrounding areas all the time, and for the most part, if they are stationary when first seen, they stay that way.

Similar for deer seen munching the greenery on the side of secondary roads or even freeways: if they aren't bothered by their surroundings, they'll happily munch on the grass on the shoulder of the road. But once they decide to freak out for whatever reason and go into escape mode, that is when things get dicey, as they attempt to bolt through traffic.

So far, my wife's car has lost this battle twice (where the 2nd time a deer hit the rental car she had while her normal car was getting repaired from the first deer strike!)
 
Where does the deer work? :biggrin:

It didn't work, it was on strike.

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Anyone ever try deer whistles? Do they work?

I've never heard of deer whistles working except in advertisements. In general deer and other animals might pay attention the first or second time the hear a new noise, but after that when they realize a wolf doesn't follow the noise, they just ignore it.

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We have Deer here in Norway too, but they pose little trouble to the cars compared to a 1300 pound Moose....

Had a moose chase me on a bicycle once in Prince George. Talk about scary. I must have exited his territory before he caught up because he stopped chasing after a minute or so.
 
It didn't work, it was on strike.

Haha, good one, J3!

A long time ago, back in my undergrad days, we had deer all over our campus and we used to get around the campus on bicycles. I vividly recall the incident when a smallish deer darted across a bike path out of nowhere (this was at night) and got its head trapped in the spokes of my front wheel bringing us all down. It managed to free itself quickly enough and I was going slowly enough that there were apparently no injuries all around; but, it was a very strange and startling experience.
 
We have a lot of deer around here, but fortunately I've only encountered only deer on the side of the road in my Roadster. A Roadster/deer collision would be scary. To my great surprise, though, it just sat there watching and didn't bolt. Usually they bolt in a random direction, which is probably fairly effective against predators, but not so much against cars that aren't actually chasing them.

It may be that EVs are less likely to startle deer than gasoline powered cars, because they aren't as noisy. Apparently this didn't help in your case, though!
 
I hear a Moose hit is horrible. Being that they are taller and the bulk of the body will fly through the windhshield once it gets clipped by the car. Most times the driver gets killed. Need to have a truck with a cattle bar or Roo bar on the front.
 
Our area is horrible...6-12 deer on our property at any given time.

My wife took out Bambi in our BMW a few years back...I was not with her and she made me drive back to the scene of the crime to pull Bambi to the side of the road.

I had another decide to run head first into the side of my Volvo XC80 - the Volvo took it well - surprisingly, so did the deer.

So far, no issues in the Tesla (or my wife's Mini that replaced the BMW).

I am going to work on the billion dollar version of MobileEye.
 
I hear ya, In Maryland, there were plans to sterilize the deer to keep the population down. But the tree-huggers fought it. Now they have some culling periods in certain areas to reduce the herd -- mostly on private lands.

We are in Howard County, there a 6 deer living in the woods next to our yard. One even jumped out on our lane as the wife drove back. She was only going 10mph and was barely able to stop in time before splatting bambi.

It is a deer infestation.
 
I hear ya, In Maryland, there were plans to sterilize the deer to keep the population down. But the tree-huggers fought it. Now they have some culling periods in certain areas to reduce the herd -- mostly on private lands.

We are in Howard County, there a 6 deer living in the woods next to our yard. One even jumped out on our lane as the wife drove back. She was only going 10mph and was barely able to stop in time before splatting bambi.

It is a deer infestation.

That's what wolves and pumas are for. If you up those populations, it will be self regulating.