According to CBC.ca, there were four separate moose vehicle collisions last evening in a span of about 45 minutes, all of them within a few minutes of our normal vacation destination of Conception Bay South, Newfoundland. The article says that three of them were in the Fowler’s Road area on the Manuels Access Road and the other near Paddy’s Pond.
That’s a pretty scary statistic. When we were there just this past Christmas, we came across one such collision within minutes of it occurring about 7:30 pm Christmas Day.
It’s quite a problem back there. With an approximated moose population of 120,000 on the island and with the hunting season and old age about all that can kill them, it’s no wonder that so many of them end up with cars wrapped around them. There’s about 700 moose-vehicle accidents per year on the island. In my own travels I’ve had several near misses, countless sightings, and I have two brother-in-laws who have had collisions with them (one was very serious and the other was so close that it took the mirror off his car!).
We are heading back that way fairly soon for vacation. The moose on the roads is always an additional stress added to the strain of driving for 15 hours across a 24-hour timeframe. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
