Riding at Night

[alanmcorcoran]

Are deer more likely to be out at night? I've only encountered them once - on PCH near Monterey in the late afternoon. Never seen a deer alive or dead on any road night or day here in Southern California. Most of my night riding is on the freeway or other regularly travelled streets and not only are there no deer, if there were, it's more likely someone else (in the other lanes) would hit them first.

Good information to know (I guess) if I ever get my schedule together for a road trip to Chicago.

[Water Warrior 2]

[quote=Easy Rider]

Originally Posted by "Water Warrior":3o8n4q0r

You can increase your measure of safety by installing a SilverStar bulb in the GZ.

Most reports I have seen favor the PIAA bulbs over SilverStar.
Similar performance but much longer life.
A little more $$$ too, I think.

[edit] I see you covered that already.[/quote:3o8n4q0r]


Great minds think alike. :biggrin:

[dhgeyer]

Former deer hunter here. Deer are, by nature, nocturnal. They feed at night, bed down during the day, and move between food and bedding areas (called deer yards) around dawn and dusk. This is also when they tend to move to water.

A couple of caveats here, though.

1. This is a tendency, not an absolute. We do occasionally see deer feeding in our yard in the daytime. Also, we were the first car to come upon the scene of a deer strike that happened during the day. I tracked the deer (a yearling) by its blood to where it lay about 50 feet off the road, and watched it die. It had run straight out of the brush into the right front fender of the lady's car. She never saw it, before or after impact, but she knew what had happened. That was exactly what happened to my daughter last year right here in the village of Merrimack, but in her case it was at night.

2. During hunting season, which is also rutting season, all bets are off. The bucks are chasing the does, and the hunters are moving all the deer around. Their routine is totally disrupted, and they can be seen at any time pretty much any place.

The overwhelming majority of deer strikes happen at night, dusk, or dawn. It used to be almost exclusively a rural concern. No longer. Deer have adapted to suburban life. They eat people's gardens, shrubs, small trees, and have become a huge nuisance in towns and even cities. I was quite amazed when I rode through one of the Mid Western cities in 2004 on my way back from New Orleans. I can't remember which city. I was on a beltway superslab, still in the city, in an industrial area, and saw about half a dozen dead deer from strikes the night before.

In California you have a different species of deer than the whitetails we have in the North East. Yours are much smaller. At Point Lobos they are so tame you can almost pet them. They're only about the size of a large dog.

The big problem with deer is that their nervous systems were not designed to avoid traffic. If you (are lucky enough to) see one standing by the road at night, you would naturally assume that it would jump back or stay still. Their brains don't work that way. They're just as likely to jump right in front of you as do anything else.

Deer aren't the only problem. You can hit quite a variety of fauna at night. In the case of some of the other animals it's not so much that they're nocturnal as that you can't see back from the road as well at night, so you don't see them coming. Around here there are a lot of foxes and coyotes, as well as skunks, woodchucks and beavers hit by vehicles. Down South I saw a lot of armadillos dead in the road. As a general rule of thumb, you don't want to hit anything with a motorcycle that you couldn't eat in one sitting.

[alanmcorcoran]

I dare say I've got a new signature!

[dhgeyer]

I'm flattergasted. Yes, I just made that word up. Alan, I can't honestly claim credit for your new sig line. I didn't make that up. It's old MC conventional wisdom.

[JWR]

Originally Posted by dhgeyer

The last Iron Butt Rally had one fatality - a deer strike. Larry Grodski, one of the most esteemed motorcycle safety experts and trainers in the USA was killed by a deer strike. He didn't like to ride at night either, but was forced to because he lost his motel room and had to move on to the next town. Got him killed.

The Iron Butte rider decided to not wear a helmet the last 50 or so miles to the final check-in.
Not the same story or rider.

Lawrence Grodsky, a nationally known motorcycle safety expert and author who taught thousands of riders to handle themselves on the roads, died Saturday on his bike in Fort Stockton, Texas, after being hit by a deer.



He was 55, and had been on his way from a safety conference in California to Pittsburgh for his mother's 85th birthday, said his sister, Marcia Grodsky.

[dhgeyer]

Originally Posted by JWR

Do you know what gear was he wearing???

I apologize. That paragraph was confusing. These were two separate incidents. Larry Grodski was killed a few years ago, and the Iron Butt fatality was last year.

While I do not know, I assume that Larry Grodski was an ATGATT type, as he was heavily into the training and safety community. There was quite some conversation, on the other hand, about the Iron Butt Rally death last year, as the fellow wasn't wearing his helmet riding at night. It was, according to what I read, quite out of character.

[Easy Rider]

Originally Posted by alanmcorcoran

Are deer more likely to be out at night?

YES.

[JWR]

Sorry I was doing an edit while you posted.

[dhgeyer]

Originally Posted by JWR

Sorry I was doing an edit while you posted.

And some good and useful research I see. When did Grodski die? I've forgotten.