It’s 6:40 on a November evening on a two-lane road east of Norman. A doe steps out of the tree line, you brake, and there’s a thud and a crumpled fender. Most auto policies handle that under comprehensive coverage, sometimes called “other than collision,” not under collision. That matters because the two usually carry separate deductibles, and the one that applies to a deer is the one people tend to forget they picked.

Why is a deer strike comprehensive and not collision?

It feels like a collision. You hit something. But most auto policies define collision as your car hitting another vehicle or an object, or rolling over. Contact with an animal is usually listed separately with the comprehensive losses, alongside hail, theft, fire, vandalism and falling objects.

The Oklahoma Insurance Department’s consumer guide puts it plainly. Comprehensive is what protects a car from things like hail, fire and falling tree limbs, and both comprehensive and collision are optional coverages in this state. If a car carries only the state-required liability (25/50/25 here), a deer strike generally leaves the repair bill with the owner. Liability pays for damage you do to other people. It doesn’t fix your own car.

Which deductible applies?

This is the part worth a look before rut season. Plenty of people carry, say, a $500 collision deductible and a $1,000 comprehensive deductible, or the other way around. Sometimes the comprehensive deductible was raised years ago to bring a premium down and nobody remembers doing it.

Here’s an illustration, not a quote. Say the repair estimate after a deer strike is $4,800: a bumper cover, a headlight assembly, a fender and the sensors behind them. With a $1,000 comprehensive deductible, the claim would typically pay about $3,800. With a $250 comprehensive deductible, it would pay about $4,550. Modern headlights and front-end sensors are why deer repairs that used to be a few hundred dollars now often run into the thousands.

The swerve wrinkle

Here’s the part most people miss. If you swerve to miss the deer and hit a guardrail, a mailbox, a culvert or the ditch instead, most policies treat that as a collision loss, because the car hit an object rather than the animal. Now the collision deductible applies, and if there’s no collision coverage on the car there may be nothing on the policy for the damage at all.

That’s one reason the advice from wildlife and highway safety folks is so consistent: brake firmly, stay in your lane, and don’t swerve. A deer strike is often the less dangerous outcome compared with leaving the road or crossing into oncoming traffic. Federal Highway Administration research found that 95.4% of animal-vehicle collisions caused no human injury. Swerving can turn a fender repair into something much worse.

When and where it happens around here

The Federal Highway Administration estimates one to two million collisions with large animals happen in the U.S. every year, though only about 300,000 get reported. In Oklahoma, the Department of Wildlife Conservation says deer movement picks up from late October into December during the breeding season, known as the rut, with November the riskiest stretch. The state’s older crash reports show the pattern too. In Oklahoma’s 2005 Crash Facts, 72.6% of animal-involved crashes happened in darkness, and 15.2% happened in November alone, close to double what an average month would carry.

Around Cleveland County that means the edges of town at dawn and dusk: Highway 9 toward Lake Thunderbird, the Little River bottoms, the roads out toward Noble and Lexington, and I-35 south toward Purcell where the creek lines cross. These are the same places you’ve seen deer all your life. The difference in November is that they stop paying attention.

What to look at on your own policy

A short list, best done before Thanksgiving traffic:

  • Does each vehicle carry comprehensive coverage, and what’s the deductible?
  • Does each vehicle carry collision, and what’s that deductible, since a swerve would land there?
  • Is there rental reimbursement or transportation expense? Front-end repairs can take a while when parts are back-ordered.
  • On a financed or leased car, the lender usually requires both coverages, so they’re probably there. On a paid-off car, they may have been dropped at some point.

Policies vary on this more than people expect. Your policy is the thing that answers which deductible would apply to your car.

Last fall we wrote a short newsletter piece on deer collisions and comprehensive coverage. This post goes a step further, into the deductibles and the swerve question.

Before the rut peaks

If you’d like a second set of eyes on your comprehensive and collision deductibles before November, take a look at our auto insurance options, or call (405) 701-5368. We’ll go through each vehicle with you. It’s a five-minute conversation that’s a lot easier to have before the deer start moving across Cleveland County.

This article is general information about how coverage typically works, not advice about your specific situation. No two insurance contracts are the same, and your policy is the only thing that says what you have. If you’d like someone to read it with you, that’s what we’re here for.