[bdavis]

Last Thursday night I was driving home and ended up hitting a deer with the Element. I had just gotten up to highway speeds when it jumped out so I hit the brakes, but still hit the deer head on doing about 40-45mph. Amazingly, the Element was barely damaged! This thing is a lot tougher than people give it credit for. The damage tally was a cracked bumper, cracked grill, 2 broken fans, and the radiator was pushed in. After all was said and done, I was still able to drive (it ran perfectly) to a local body shop about a mile away. Here are some pics of it the following morning, as you can see, hardly any damage! I love this thing!

 

[sloweddie]

Glad you're ok and the E isn't busted up too much. I can assume at that speed the deer isn't ok, the dam things litter the highways around here and cause some serious accidents/deaths in addition to eating everything in my yard. Moving to PHX in a couple of week; no more deer, but other critters to put up with.
Glad your airbags didn't go off either, they're so expensive to replace.
se

 

[psschmied]

Hopefully you live in a state where you can harvest road kill.

 

[ORANGEE]

Like they told me..............That'll buff right out !

 

[bdavis]

sloweddie - Yeah unfortunately the deer was not ok. He was pretty banged up, we called a State Trooper to end his suffering. The deer around our area are normally pretty good about not jumping in front of traffic, but this one was an adolescent male and just hadn't learned the ropes yet.

ORANGEE - That's almost exactly what the body shop guy said! The element didn't suffer too much, only a minor flesh wound. Should have it back in a couple days :-D

 

[2009 ELE]

I hate that happened. The deer I swear are on suicide missions!!!