It’s not the moose’s fault we keep running into them

The first time I ever saw a Maine moose was at dusk one evening. I thought it was the neighbor’s horse on the loose and tried to lead it back to his barn. My moose identification skills have improved since then because I occasionally see them as

I drive rural Maine roads to and from night shifts in the ER. At such times the shadows blend and the wary driver watches for moose and deer, though the mind may wander to ponder such weighty issues as recent suggestions to shoot more moose as a way of preventing moose-motorist crashes in Maine.

The idea of killing off more moose to prevent moose-motorist collisions is one born of legitimate frustration, fear, anger and grief. There are an average of 800 collisions, 200 injuries and three deaths each year in Maine due to moose-vehicle collisions, and the numbers seem to be on the rise. Four Mainers have been killed so far this year, and if you’re the friend or family of one of them you’d be willing to kill every moose on the planet to have prevented what happened.

The problem with our antlered amis is that they are dark, their eyes don’t glow in the headlights, and their body mass is built up off the ground where it blends into the background. When they get hit they tend to fall onto the vehicle. That’s why one in four crashes between a vehicle and a moose cause an injury to an occupant, and even though only 14 percent of the animal-motorist crashes in Maine between 1999 and 2001 involved a moose, 8 of the 10 human fatalities did.

Moose make an easy target because it is a moose’s lot in life to be loved and hunted in Maine, and they don’t vote. The state issues hunting permits to shoot 2,600 moose every year, so shooting a few more in order to prevent collisions seems like no big deal. Shooting moose to prevent collisions, however, simplistically and poorly mixes traffic and wildlife policy. The state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which profits from the sale of moose hunting licenses and is therefore conflicted on this issue, should stick to determining hunt numbers based on wildlife biology and herd size, and leave traffic safety to the Department of Transportation.

First, the math of shooting more moose to prevent collisions does not work very well. If 30,000 moose cause an average of 800 crashes, 200 injuries, and three deaths each year, we will have to kill 375 moose to prevent one accident, 1,500 to prevent one injury, and 10,000 to prevent one death. Shooting moose just is not a very effective way to prevent traffic deaths. It may work as politics and as revenge, it may slay frustration, but the math makes it impractical and ineffective unless we kill them all.

Second, if the state is going to shoot traffic menaces, moose are the wrong target. Moose cause 80 percent of the animal-motorist fatalities that occur in Maine, but less than 2 percent of the state’s motor vehicle deaths. We cause the other 98 percent. About 200 Maine drivers are killed each year on Maine roads; half of the deaths are caused by drunken driving, and another third by inattentive driving including cell phone use. Drivers just being idiots are much more of a menace than moose are, and we don’t shoot drunken drivers and cell phone users. We don’t shoot our traffic menaces in Maine, and shouldn’t, whether two-legged dummies who ought to know better, or four-legged dummies which haven’t a clue. (Come to think of it, 14 people were killed in snowmobile accidents in Maine last winter, but I don’t think we should shoot snowmobiles either.)

Third, the main problem on our roads is not the lumbering moose. It is that too many of us drive too fast and too carelessly. (That is not to say that any of those who have ever collided with a moose were not careful drivers; perhaps they all were.) Most moose-vehicle collisions happen at dusk or at night, yet few of us remember from driver’s education that if you are driving more than 40 miles per hour at night you probably cannot stop in the distance you can see ahead. It takes about 300 feet to stop a car going 40 mph, and at night the average low beam headlight only illuminates 160 feet ahead. High beams might get you 300 feet. Most of us are driving too fast not to stop within the illuminated distance ahead on the road, and it is a wonder more of us don’t hit barns, let alone moose.

Before Mainers are justified in shooting more moose to make themselves safer they should collectively and individually make small sacrifices in how they drive to decrease their risk of running into moose and each other. Drivers should slow down, minimize nighttime and dusk driving in areas with a high moose population, and turn down interior car lights so they can see the dark road more clearly. They could minimize night driving for any reason; a driver’s chances of being killed in a traffic accident of any cause between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. are four times higher than the risk during daytime driving.

We could all do more than that. Car occupants could always wear seatbelts and the state could pass a primary enforcement seatbelt law. Motorcyclists could all wear helmets, and people could stop driving drunk as though it were a state sport. They could stop driving while talking on cell phones, which can have the effect of making the yapping driver as unsafe as a drunken driver. These changes might prevent many moose-vehicle collision injuries and deaths, and would do much more to reduce traffic injuries and deaths from all causes than shooting more moose. We should focus on the causes of the other 197 traffic deaths each year before we shoot thousands of moose to prevent three.

There is little that can be said to those who have lost friends and/or family to moose-car collisions that will make sense or ease pain. Disagreeing with anything they want in order to remedy a cosmic wrong seems petty and insensitive. But shooting 8,000 to 10,000 more moose as a way to save one life is not good traffic policy, and the remedy should not be determined on the basis of which species has a trigger finger. Real safety on Maine roads can be found in our own hands, in our own cars, in our own care, not at the point of a gun aimed at more of our moose.

Erik Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.