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Three dead cows

R

Rollie NE PA

Well-known Member
At 5 am this morning a friends cows got out and were hit by a pickup truck. Three cows were killed and another is injured. I am told there were possibly 10+ cows on the road when the accident happened. I know it is dark at 5 am ( no fog) but how a person could not see that many cows on the road is beyond me. The drive has minor injuries and his new pickup truck is toast.
 
I deliver feed to cows. I have had cows run across the field just to get in front of me. Never understood why. The road can be clear and they will jump right in front. I have hit many but going slow didn't hurt them.
 
If they were black/brown/dark colored cows and all three in the road together and if a vehicle is traveling 40+ mph in darkness it would be extremely easy to not see them until it was too late.
 
My cousin killed 3 horses with a motercyle He spent 2 months in hospital with little permanent damage. They blend in so well in the dark it's amazing. Of course that was 30 years ago and headlights weren't as good
 
Losing the cows is a bad deal............but I'm afraid things could be getting a bit ugly in the future for the owner of those cows...........I hope the owner has good insurance. I'll be honest, as a cattle owner myself, that is one of my biggest worries. Cows getting out and causing an accident. I check the electric fence morning and night every day to ensure it is not shorted out.
 
Sure depends where you live. Oklahoma is not an open range state, but livestock on the highway are to be avoided by drivers. Unless the owner is proven to be negligent in keeping his livestock in, the driver has to pay the value of any injured or killed animal.
 
We had one get hit one time. His insurance paid for it. They said it was no different than hitting a deer. Our insurance paid for the value of the cow,his paid to fix the car. That's how it works in Michigan anyway.
 
andy, maybe you may know, i remember reading something a long time ago about hitting an animal with a car. it was a difference between a
cow and horse. i think if you hit a cow, it was the drvers fault, but if you hit a horse, it was the animals owners fault. is that correct?
 
Liability is based on state and local laws. You can't extrapolate from one state to another. Because I run cattle in Oklahoma it important I understand Oklahoma law. I also try to keep my cattle fenced and sell habitual fence jumpers.

So give us some more information:

What state was friend's horse in?

Did the friend have good fences?

Did he lose the lawsuit? Anybody can get sued for frivolous reasons.
 
andy, it wasnt a specific insident, iirc it was because one is considered livestock, and a horse was a work animal, or something along those
lines. when i did insurace claims if a car hit a deer or another animal, it was covered under comphrehensive coverage, but if a car hit a person,
it was covered under collision portion of the policy. i found that odd....to say the least!!
 
That does not provide much incentive if any to keep livestock fenced in. When cattle prices are unprofitable do you see more cattle loose on the roadways?
 
We had beef cattle here in the '60's-early 70's and we'd hear tires squeal at night, wait for the thump (never heard it though), then someone at the door saying 'cows are out'! Get out there and get'em back in, and find/patch the hole!! Don't miss those days! Had one of our feed trucks hit a horse a few years ago, did a pile of damage to the truck, killed the horse. Nicknamed the driver 'Mr. Ed for a while.
 
I have come upon black angus cattle in the dark,and believe me they were not easy to see.If he was rounding a bend,he very well may not have seen them until it was too late.Mark
 
I had two bred heifers get out three years ago the driver was not hurt thankfully.Car wrecked,heifers killed, my insurance paid for car and my heifers.First time this happend in thirty three years.Scott
 
Dark colored cows on the road are very hard to see in time to stop. I have come up on a herd standing on the road only once. I swerved through the herd and didn't touch any but the lord must have had a hand in helping me.
 
While driving my 6 volt 60's Volkswagon
Beatle down county N , I was suddenly
dodging cows , Thank God the family and I
made it thru , they are hard to see on dark
night only thing I could see was the eyes,
Running into any thing with those old beatles
would result in serious injury or death
 
Have one question, how fast was he going? Every vehical driving at night that I see they are over driving their headlights. In other words stoping time is twice the ilimunated distance of the headlights. So at those speeds not hard to not see something on the road so you cannot stop in time.
 
If people drive out where you do like they do around here they go flying down side roads & highways and couldn't stop and could be somebody coming home from work and half asleep.
 
Some drivers "aim" their vehicle and give way to nothing, man nor beast. I had a friend that would set his truck on cruise control on country roads. He said that if you slow up for wildlife or any other living thing, that they get confused and will more likely be hit. I don't ride with him anymore.
 
(quoted from post at 18:12:13 08/11/17) At 5 am this morning a friends cows got out and were hit by a pickup truck. Three cows were killed and another is injured. I am told there were possibly 10+ cows on the road when the accident happened. I know it is dark at 5 am ( no fog) but how a person could not see that many cows on the road is beyond me. The drive has minor injuries and his new pickup truck is toast.
Click to expand...

5AM, he's tooling along drinking his coffee, maybe texting or reading texts, maybe looking for his snack in his lunch pail or a CD, half awake, half aware of where he is or what he's doing. Not hard to imagine at all. We've had people rear end police cars and ambulances at accident scenes in broad daylight. This isn't hard to understand at all. You have to remember that while you and I are always on the ball, completely aware of our surroundings and driving defensively (sarcasm!!!) 99% of the people out there have a massive cranial/rectal inversion when they are driving, ie- they have their heads up their backside.
 
We had a guy pulling a camper and a boat hit a section of a center pivot that was being moved down the hiway in broad day light. The guys with sprinkler were turning on to a hiway when the camper came over the high probably a good 1/3 mile away. There was several red flags and banners attached to the sprinkler along the sides. Anyway the camper guy said he never saw the huge sprinkler section and ran right into it at about 2/3 front the front. Needless to say it trashed has camper, boat and some damage to pickup. Destroyed sprinkler, flipped both vehicles that were attached to the sprinkler. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. One of the people in the pulling pickup and a broken shoulder and arm but other than that all involved were very lucky. He hit it right where there was two bright red flags hanging down probably six feet long. Nobody can figure out why he couldn't see the sprinkler or any or the flags. Very lucky... funtwohunt
 
If the livestock are in the middle of the road at NIGHT, and it is NOT open range, you
really think the driver is at fault?
 
I agree with you that anything dark on road at night is almost impossible to see. So the thing you should do is if your lights only let you see something 200' in front of you that you drive so you can stop in that 200' without hitting it. Do NOT drive fast enough that if your lights only light up so you can see 200' DO NOT DRIVE FAST ENOUGHT IT TAKES YOU 600' to stop.
 
Only if there is no sign posted "Open range" or something to that effect. With that sign posted, the driver owe's the farmer new livestock.
 
There will be stored data on the vehicles black box as to the speed the vehicle was traveling and braking action at the time the airbags deployed. Not sure if there will be any GPS data.

State police said they treat the incident the same as if the driver hit deer. Although I am not sure, I think the driver travels this road quite often.
 
Black or dark cows are very hard to see at night. I can understand completely how he hit them. In Nebraska we have free range law. You can not sue the owner of the cows for damages. Hitting a cow is no different than hitting a deer.
 

Here in NH I bet that anyone is 500 times more likely to come across a moose on the road at night than a cow. Because I used to put many miles on my truck at night, I have had a few close encounters with moose. I can tell you that you cannot see them until you get close. Their fur seems to reflect no light at all. All that you can see is the absence of whatever you should be seeing but is blocked by the moose. So when you suddenly can't see a patch of the road surface ahead of you, you had better be on your brakes fast and hard. I expect that black cows hair works the same way.
 
(quoted from post at 19:59:04 08/12/17)
Here in NH I bet that anyone is 500 times more likely to come across a moose on the road at night than a cow. Because I used to put many miles on my truck at night, I have had a few close encounters with moose. I can tell you that you cannot see them until you get close. Their fur seems to reflect no light at all. All that you can see is the absence of whatever you should be seeing but is blocked by the moose. So when you suddenly can't see a patch of the road surface ahead of you, you had better be on your brakes fast and hard. I expect that black cows hair works the same way.
Click to expand...

Yep,
If you're to drive the speed it takes to stop after seeing a black cow on a black road, that would be less than 20 MPH.
 
(quoted from post at 21:59:04 08/12/17)
Here in NH I bet that anyone is 500 times more likely to come across a moose on the road at night than a cow. Because I used to put many miles on my truck at night, I have had a few close encounters with moose. I can tell you that you cannot see them until you get close. Their fur seems to reflect no light at all. All that you can see is the absence of whatever you should be seeing but is blocked by the moose. So when you suddenly can't see a patch of the road surface ahead of you, you had better be on your brakes fast and hard. I expect that black cows hair works the same way.
Click to expand...

You think a moose is hard to see in the road, try a black bear. Unless the bear is looking at you and the light reflects from his eyes, you can NOT see that bear. I barely missed one only because he was traveling at an angle away from me and the bottoms of his feet were lighter colored than the rest of him. Might as well have been invisible other than that.
 
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