Watch for Deer

At 1 p.m. Monday we were turning left onto Epps Bridge Road and glanced to our right in time to see a deer run across the road and get struck by a car. At 1. In the friggin afternoon. What the hell, Bambi?

Ironically, my local paper ran a story today about deer being active in the area. Me being me, I also started looking for deer crash data to flesh out the information. The best I could find, and it's not great, is this pdf from the Georgia DOT. The most recent data is from 2006, making you wonder if deer stopped running into cars or if Georgia just stopped counting. Unfortunately, the data are in pdf form, so it's hard to sort and to easily see which counties rate the highest. Me being me, I managed to kinda sorta force feed them into a spreadsheet.  Below, a bit of ranking.

Raw Deer Accidents
2006 Data (# in parentheses)

1. Fayette (563)
2. Gwinnett (512)
3. Columbia (424)
4. Fulton (366)
5. Baldwin (364
6. Clarke (337)

I only went to 6th to showcase Athens-Clarke, where I live, because it's my blog and I can do what I want.  Okay, how about per miles traveled? That's better, because it kinda sorta controls for large populations.

Rate of Deer Accidents

1. Burke (92.4)
2. Baldwin (79.9)
3. Appling (75.4)
4. Fayette (53.3)
5. Columbia (46.8)

So I'd stay away from Fayette County -- high on both raw totals and rate of deer accidents per miles driven.