West Virginia Tops for Deer-Vehicle Accidents

For the second year in a row the vehicles most likely to collide with a deer are in West Virginia.

Using its deer claims data from the last half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 and motor vehicle registration counts by state from the Federal Highway Administration, State Farm estimates the chances of a West Virginia vehicle colliding with a deer over the next 12 months at 1 in 45. Such a collision is even more likely in West Virginia than it was a year ago when the odds were 1 in 57.

The probability of a vehicle hitting a deer in West Virginia sometime in the next year is roughly two times greater than the possibility that you will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 2009 and 1,100 times greater than your chance of winning a state lottery grand prize if you buy one ticket per day for the next year.

Michigan remains second on the list. The likelihood of a specific vehicle striking a deer there next year is 1 in 78. Pennsylvania (1 in 97), Iowa (1 in 105) and Arkansas (1 in 108) each moved up one spot on the list to third, fourth and fifth respectively.

South Dakota is sixth. Wisconsin dropped from third to seventh. Montana, North Dakota and Virginia round out the top 10.

The state in which deer-vehicle collisions are least likely is still Hawaii (1 in 10,962).

The average property damage cost of these incidents was just over $2,950, up 2.5 percent from a year ago.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety®, there are approximately 1.5 million deer-vehicle collisions annually in the United States, causing more than 150 fatalities and $1.1 billion in property damage. State Farm's data shows the total number of deer-vehicle collisions in the United States has increased 14.9 percent from five years ago.

These collisions are more frequent during the deer migration and mating season in October, November and December. The combination of growing deer populations and the displacement of deer habitat caused by urban sprawl are producing increasingly hazardous conditions for motorists and deer.