This Daily Mail story could have been a whole lot funnier – but it’s still amusing in its own way.
A Norwegian driver swerved to avoid a moose on a remote mountain road – and drove into a bear instead! The bear is being tracked as it appears to have been seriously injured (the driver was OK), but you can see how this could have been much funnier if it was used as the script for, say, a Warner Brothers cartoon, and if the Coyote or Daffy Duck was driving the car. And if the bear got angry…
Apparently, the moose was demonstrating a level of safety awareness typical of its kind by walking in the road at midnight, while the bear was busy going about bear business off to the side somewhere. Incidentally, if you Google images for “moose in road” you’ll be surprised to discover that this animal seems to spend more time walking on tarmac than it does in grass.
Joking aside, moose accidents can be very serious, and often fatal (for the driver as well as the moose). After all, a typical moose can weigh over half a tonne, which is at least half the weight of a normal car.
It reminds me of the time a herd of deer ran out in front of traffic in the Cotswolds, and I saw the engine fall out of a Transit van after it ran into them at 50-60mph. A typical female deer probably weighs in at a tenth of what a moose does.
I always tell this story to my pupils when we cover the Emergency Stop as part of the emphasis on the dangers of speed and lots of mass.