FOXSYLVANIA

– – More than one million Americans annually will hit a deer with their car, and the odds of doing so have gone up 21% in the past five years as the deer population has increased.

Nationally, your odds of striking a deer with your vehicle are 1 in 183, with West Virginia the most likely state for such a mishap with odds of 1 in 42.  Hawaii is the state where you are least likely to strike a deer, with the odds being only 1 in 13,000.

About three in four collisions between cars and animals involve deer, and the annual human death toll from such accidents is about 140.  Such deaths aren’t usually a direct result of hitting the animal, but rather it’s the secondary impact with another vehicle or going off the road that proves fatal. It’s usually curtains for the deer as well.

While deer are the biggest problem, they aren’t the only road hazard, with feral hogs proving a growing problem and lending new meaning to the term, “road hog!”