Author: Carolyn O'Neal

So there’s good news and bad news

The good news is that my letter to the editor was published in the Crozet Gazette.

The bad news is that it was originally a much longer essay and over half the essay had to be chopped.

The good news is that no one was seriously hurt.

The bad news is that our car was totaled when a deer ran into our car while we were driving 65 miles an hour in the rain.

The good news is that this accident was my call to action.

Deer shouldn’t have access to run onto any interstate. I wrote my local representative, Albemarle County Supervisor Jim Andrews, about the accident as well as the letter to the Crozet Gazette, in hopes that more would be done to protect both people and wildlife. Deer fences and wildlife corridors are just two ways to prevent deer from jumping into rushing traffic.

You can read my letter to the editor of the Crozet Gazette by going to: https://www.crozetgazette.com/2024/12/07/to-the-editor-deer-vs-car-on-i-64/

Below is my complete essay on the accident.

The news out of Asheville and Blowing Rock was bleak. Scores of people were lost in rivers swollen by Hurricane Helena. In Albemarle County, days of rain had put every living thing on edge, both human and animal. Maybe that’s why the deer ran into rush hour traffic.
My husband and I had tickets to see a 7 pm show at the Alamo Theater. It was one of those free older movies costing $5 each, which goes to purchasing food. I needed a few items from Wegmans so we left home around 5 pm. We’re both in our upper 60s and always seem to have prescriptions to pick up from the Wegmans Pharmacy. I feared I would forget if we went after the movie.
Leaving early usually pays off. Not this time.
Usually it’s still light at 5:15 in September but that evening was dark and dreary as if it were the dead of winter. Cars and trucks were speeding by in the heavy rain. Our windshield wipers were going fast and everyone had their headlights on. My husband was driving our dark blue Subaru Outback in the right lane on I-64 East, going around 65 miles per hour, when I saw the deer in the median. It had antlers and was big and was running towards us. Somehow it must have crossed I-64 West. The deer disappeared down the slope and I hoped it would stay there or find another way across.
There must be some strange mechanism in the brain that makes life threatening situations happen both in a flash and in slow motion. Cars in front of us. Cars behind us. A tractor trailer truck sped on the left hand side. Then the deer appeared. It was like a scene from a war movie, when the navigator of a battleship sees the torpedo coming toward them and holds on tight, knowing the ship is about to be hit. I braced and my husband tensed. The deer cleared the left hand lane and jumped.
We were still going 65 miles an hour when the deer landed on our windshield. I don’t remember all the details. Maybe I was covering my face or clutching my seatbelt or watching the other cars. Somehow my husband was able to pull the car over and park inches from the guardrail. His side window was shattered. His side mirror was gone.
My husband had been hit. His face looked like he’d been punched by a prizefighter. Maybe a hoof had come through the shattered window. Maybe an antler. His jaw was swelling. Blood streaked down his face and dripped from the tip of his nose, like that scene from Carrie after the bucketful of blood is dropped on Sissy Spacek. I didn’t know if it was his blood or the deer’s blood or a mixture of both. His eyeglasses were knocked off. Perhaps they’d saved his vision. Crushed glass crusted the corner of his left eye. Fur and shattered glass was everywhere. On our faces, in our hair, all over the inside of our car.
Before asking if I was OK, before calling 911 or our insurance company, my husband asked me to contact the Alamo Theater. “Tell them we need a refund for the tickets,” he said. I was so scatterbrained at that moment that I messaged Alamo and told them about the accident and asked about their refund policy.
I called 911 and gave them as many details as I could. We were on I-64 East, between the Ivy exit and Route 29. We were parallel to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir when a deer jumped at our car.
“Are there any injuries? “
“Yes.”
“Do you need an ambulance?”
“Yes. My husband has blood all over his face.”
“OK, the police and ambulance are on the way.”
I tried to open my door but the car was too close to the guard rail. Neither of us wanted to get out on the driver’s side since it was still rush hour. Passing trucks caused the car to vibrate.
Moments later an ambulance, a police car, and a fire truck pulled up around us. The ambulance parked in front of us, and the police car and fire truck parked behind us, blocking the right lane. They placed cones to guide traffic away from us and helped my husband out of the car.
I grabbed my purse and phone and opened the glove compartment for the folder with the insurance information. I grabbed my sunglasses even though I didn’t need them. I grabbed my water battle and started to climb over to the driver’s seat when I spotted my husband’s eyeglasses on the floor near the pedals. They were bent and scratched. I picked them up and made my way out of the car.
The rain had slowed to a misty sputter. Traffic was loud and unnerving, even with our lane blocked. I asked what had happened to the deer. It was behind the firetruck, they said. I didn’t look. I’ve seen enough dead animals hit by cars. I didn’t need to see this one. The police said they’d arrange for a tow truck to take our car away.
The paramedics loaded my husband into the ambulance and strapped him onto a stretcher. I followed and found a seat that strapped me in like a roller coaster ride. The paramedics checked my husband’s blood pressure, took his medical history, and called the UVA emergency room to let them know we were on our way. I checked my phone. I couldn’t help but smile when I read the thoughtful reply from the Alamo Theater expressing concern for our safety and assuring us they would do whatever we wanted regarding refunding the tickets.
We arrived at UVA’s newly remodeled ER. My husband was wheeled in on a stretcher. We walked past medical staff and a couple of very serious looking guards with corrections officer on their lapels. I told them that we’d had a deer related accident and their faces soften. Everyone is sweet to old people, especially when one of them has blood running down his face. I had to hurry to catch up with the stretcher. They transferred my husband to a wheelchair and checked in at a service desk. I found my way to the waiting area. The TV was on behind me. A woman in a wheelchair surrounded by family was across from me. The ER was full of people, some in wheelchairs. I didn’t see anyone else with blood on their face.
I was still full of tension when my husband was wheeled past me and pushed through double doors. Someone came over and told me where they were taking him and what they were doing. They told me to wait. I tried to hold onto everything they said. I clutched the items I’d taken from the car like they were precious remnants of a previous life: notebook from the glove compartment, my water bottle, and his twisted and scratched eyeglasses.
By the time I updated relatives about the accident it was close to 7 pm. They wanted to come to the hospital but I told them to wait until I knew more. Then came the long, and I mean LONG, phone call with the insurance company. The person who answered was sympathetic and efficient but the ER was so noisy I often had to ask her to repeat herself. Still feeling scattered by the accident didn’t help. I couldn’t remember my car’s license number but I could remember its make and model. The insurance company had an old email address and old phone number for us in their records so they had to be updated. I told her about the deer and about the rain and about the blood on my husband’s face. Talking about the wreck calmed my nerves and helped me focus on getting the automobile and health insurance sorted out, giving both the insurance company and the hospital the necessary policy numbers, birthdates, and phone numbers.
I was so focused on the phone call that I didn’t realize my husband had been wheeled back to the waiting room. His face was still streaked with blood. I told him I had contacted relatives and the insurance company and he told me the doctor wanted to do a CT Scan of his head.
We had intended to order pizza and popcorn at the Alamo for dinner. Neither of us had eaten anything since breakfast. The vending machines were on the other side of the ER, beyond the security guards and metal detectors. Nothing in the machines looked appealing. Chips, candy, one type of Nature Valley granola bar. The drink machine was even worse. In truth I was too tense to eat. I skipped the vending machines and went to the bathroom to wash my face and hands and wash my water bottle. I found a water fountain and filled it up.
Back through the metal detectors and guards, I returned to the waiting room. My husband was gone. I asked the woman behind the desk if I could go see him and she gave me a visitor’s tag. She pushed a button and the mysterious double doors opened.
My husband shared a room with another patient, separated by a curtain. Listening to the doctors I learned that the other man had come to the ER because he feared he was having a heart attack. His daughter had accompanied him. She was around high school age and helped translate for him. My husband was already acquainted with them when I arrived. The girl told us that her younger brother was turning fifteen this year so my husband asked if boys have anything like a quinceanera. She perked with this question and said boys celebrate in other ways.
Someone came in and put an IV in my husband’s right arm. Someone else came to remove bits of glass from my husband’s wounds. Someone arrived with ibuprofen. The order for the CT Scan had finally been approved so someone wheeled my husband away. I updated relatives. My husband returned from his CT scan shortly before the test results came in for the other man. Good news. He wasn’t having a heart attack. The man was released. We said our goodbyes and wished each other well.
A series of people came in to look at my husband’s wounds and try to clean some of the blood off his face. The doctor asked if he knew when my husband had his last tetanus shot. The doctor was concerned about what the deer and the glass could have transmitted. A new tetanus shot was ordered. I hoped they could give it to him through his IV. He’d gone through so much already.
While we waited for the CT results and the tetanus shot, housekeeping came in and cleaned the room, taking way the trash and mopping the floor. It was close to 9 pm and I wanted to go home. My body was achy and I was getting a headache. I dug a couple of Tylenol from my purse and took them with water. I regretted not buying a granola bar from the vending machine. Another patient was brought in to take the place of the patient who had been discharged, a man with a thick Eastern European accent and his wife. Every time doctors visited the man I tried to catch their eye. I wanted to know what to expect. Would my husband be admitted? Would he be discharged? It was approaching 10 pm by the time we heard the results of the CT Scan. Nothing was broken. No indication of a concussion. Thank goodness. A nurse came to take out my husband’s IV. Next came the tetanus shot in the upper arm, the same arm that used to have the IV. Waiting for our discharge papers was possibly the worst part of the whole ordeal. We were both exhausted and overwhelmed. We needed showers, food, and rest, in that order.
Uber is a great resource but weighing time against money at 11:30 pm is tough. Six minutes wait for $45. Twenty minutes wait for $25. We opted to wait the twenty minutes. On our way home in the backseat of the Uber we passed several cars stranded on the side of the road. Firetrucks and ambulances screeched by us on I-64 West. At a time of night when there should have been no traffic at all, I-64 slowed to a crawl. It was raining again. Somewhere in the woods deer were still trying to cross the interstate.
The next morning my husband called highway patrol to find out where our car had been towed. By some miracle it wasn’t raining. Our Outback didn’t look too bad except for the banged up front left side, missing driver side mirror and window, and softball size hole in the front windshield. Inside was a different matter. Not only were the front seats, dashboard, and gear control covered with shattered glass and deer hair, the interior was also soaked. Our insurance company wasn’t happy to hear that. “They were supposed to wrap the car,” they said. We speculated that the water damage would total the car even if the deer didn’t, but we still had to find a shop to take a look at it and give us and the insurance company their estimate.
The first car repair shop suggested by our insurance company was fully booked and wouldn’t have an opening for three weeks. We ended up telling the insurance agent to find a shop and arrange for towing. The agent took care of finding a shop, towing the car, and getting a repair estimate. We discovered that the reason so many shops were fully booked for weeks was because of deer related accidents. Hearing this was maddening. Why weren’t all interstates protected from deer? Where were the deer fences and wildlife corridors for deer to move under the interstate? My anger prompted me to write my Albemarle County Supervisor Jim Andrews and tell him about our accident. He responded immediately with concern for our health and questions about where exactly the accident took place so he could let VDOT know.
As expected, a few days later we received a phone call that our car was totaled. We started looking for a good replacement on the CarMax website and found what we wanted. We picked up our Honda CRV exactly two weeks after the deer crashed into our Subaru Outback. I specifically requested a white car, hoping it would be easier for deer to see at night. The insurance company gave us the blue book value for our Outback, but not replacement value, not by a long shot. I’m not bitter. In many ways we were lucky. It could have cost us much more.