The Moose-Shaped Hazards of Driving in Canada

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, photojournalist Daniella Zalcman tells us more about what it’s like to drive your car into a moose.

Daniella! So what happened here?

So I’m driving north on Highway 11 in Ontario, about four hours into my trip from Toronto, and it’s around 7 p.m. I was on my way to North Bay for a story I’d been working on for the past month that had taken me all over Canada, and this was my last week of travel. I was pretty exhausted, and a little burned out, and not super happy to be driving — I’ve only had my license for about two years, and between living in New York City and London for nearly a decade let’s just say I’m not the most experienced motorist.

Anyway, it’s 7 p.m. in November in Ontario, which means that it’s completely dark out, and Canada is not great about putting in lights on its highways, so outside of the twenty-foot circumference of my brights I can’t see a damn thing. I’d just had to pass this truck in the right lane that was spewing some really disgusting dense black smoke and was speeding slightly, about 110 km/hr or so, when I see this THING in the middle of my lane. For a split second, I think it’s a person, and then as I get closer I realize just how fantastically large it is and HOLY SHIT THERE IS A MOOSE IN FRONT OF ME WHAT DO I DO AND WHY ISN’T IT MOVING AND GODDAMNIT CANADA, is more or less what went through my head. I have just enough time to look in my rearview mirror and realize there’s a little time to brake before I make contact with the black hole of animal matter in front of me.

So I brake, and then I hit the moose.

Moose are a) VERY BIG and b) very top-heavy, so, for lack of a better word, his butt was thrown into the passenger side of the windshield and briefly entered my car before he fell over. My windshield immediately fractured into a billion tiny pieces (I was under the impression that windshield glass was tempered and designed to crumble with nicely rounded edges, not break into tiny daggers, but it broke into tiny daggers), basically leaving me unable to see anything outside of my car. I am very, very embarrassed and shamed to admit this, but at that point I was only focused on staying in my lane and continuing to move forward to avoid another collision with the car behind me, so I’m pretty sure I drove over his hind legs as I tried to get over onto the shoulder. I am so sorry, buddy.

Somehow, he got up and walked off, probably muttering moose invective under his breath.

Most importantly: Are you OK? Second most importantly: Wow!?!?!?!

I want to be very clear that I am totally, TOTALLY okay. It was not super traumatic, I am alive, and hopefully the moose is alive, and really everything was okay except for my rental car, which was very not okay. But thankfully Hertz drove a replacement up to me the next day, so it all worked out in the end. I just had to spend the next 48 hours brushing my hair very gingerly, because I’d inevitably find another cache of windshield glass fragments.

I was extremely lucky to have an incredibly sweet pair of Canadians driving behind me — they pulled over immediately when they saw me hit the moose, called the police for me while I sat in my car blankly staring into space, unpacked my trunk, waited with me until the tow truck came, and then drove me to my destination. If it hadn’t been for them, I would at the very best have frozen to death waiting for a tow truck to come, and at the very worst been revenge-gored by an angry moose. I am seriously indebted to them.

Pretty much every person I encountered afterwards told me that I was insanely lucky — moose-related accidents frequently result in pretty critical injuries and sometimes death. Then they asked me what I did with the moose steaks.

Lesson learned (if any)?

I grew up in Maryland, in an area badly overpopulated by deer. They’re unfortunately not very intelligent animals. They routinely wandered onto busy roads and were constantly being hit by drivers. I remember being warned by multiple sources that if you were ever on a collision course with a deer, don’t take evasive action, don’t brake suddenly, but maintain speed or even accelerate into the animal. I’ve looked this up online, and it turns out it might not be right, but the logic was that braking suddenly could actually force the deer through the windshield, which would almost certainly result in serious injury. Regardless of whether or not that advice is relevant for deer collisions, it is DEFINITELY not true for moose. Accelerating into an animal that weighs on average 1,000 pounds means certain death. Don’t do it, kids.

Just one more thing.

On my drive back to Toronto (which I completed, white-knuckled, shoulders clenched, glaring over the steering wheel for all five hours), I kept an eye out for the place where I’d had my accident. On the southbound side of the highway was a GIANT moose warning sign, complete with flashing lights and a label that said “NIGHT DANGER.” So . . . now I know.

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