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Deer and moose are like giant drunk toddlers. They’ll leap in front of your car for seemingly no reason: So woe betide the driver who thinks he can speed by some roadside deer without them going all kamikaze on his weekend plans.

Also, the faster the speed, the worse the collision. Hit a deer in a school zone, and the only damage done is to your pants. Do it at 120, and your funeral is closed casket.

Anyone who’s driven from Edmonton to Vancouver knows that Highway 16 slows from about 110 km/h to 80 km/h as you pass through Jasper National Park. The reason they do that is because they don’t want you ploughing your BMW through mountain goats.

So, if you don’t like getting moose antlers stabbed into your heart, pay attention to your speed, particularly at night. The majority of wildlife collisions happen between 9 pm and midnight.

And those wildlife crossing signs aren’t there for fun: If you see one of these, it’s because you’re entering a stretch of roadway that’s slick with deer blood a lot of the time.

TIP NUMBER TWO: DON’T SWERVE

Here’s a sad thing that happens a lot: Someone sees an adorable animal in the middle of the road, so they swerve their car to avoid it, and they end up killing someone.

In November, a 24-year-old Regina woman was killed after she swerved to avoid hitting an injured deer, and ploughed into the back of a semi truck. Two months before that, a 27-year-old Halifax woman swerved to avoid an animal in the middle of the road, causing a crash that killed her passenger.

That’s why: Never swerve. By trying to save an animal’s life, you could end up causing infinitely more carnage than a dead squirrel. After all: An animal isn’t a telephone pole: You might swerve just to have it jump in front of you anyway.

Besides, you just polished off a bacon Whopper, and suddenly you’re St. Francis of Assisi? Don’t risk people’s lives to save a duck. If you’re a collision course with an animal, just brake as much as you can and blow the horn.

The one possible exception is if you’re about to hit a moose. Moose are particularly deadly for drivers because they’re basically 600 pounds of meat on toothpick legs. In a crash, your hood goes through the toothpicks and the animal flies through your windshield; so swerving can potentially ward off a direct hit. But here again, you’ve got to be careful. If swerving around a moose means steering into oncoming traffic, don’t do it. And if you’re driving a truck or SUV, you probably shouldn’t do it either.

Vehicle safety analysts have a test, appropriately called the moose test, in which a car driving at high speed swerves around a stationary point designed to mimic a moose. Even with a professional driver behind the wheel, a surprising amount of cars don’t pass the test and end up rolling over.