TOWNSHIP 2, RANGE 8 – Christian Tremblay probably never knew what killed him.

Tremblay, 53, of Laval, Quebec, in the Montreal suburbs, was driving north on Interstate 95 on Thursday, heading for Baxter State Park, when his Volkswagen Jetta hit a moose a few hundred feet shy of mile marker 233 at about 9:30 p.m., state police Trooper Barry Meserve said Friday.

Tremblay was killed as the car’s front fender slammed into the legs of the huge animal, and the moose’s torso burst through most of the front windshield, leaving Tremblay’s wife, Francine Marseille, 54, frantically trying to steer the car from the passenger’s side front seat.

“She had no way of braking it,” Meserve said.

The Jetta went into the median after the collision, then back across the highway and about 150 yards off the highway down the right embankment before it came to a stop, Meserve said.

“It was fairly instantaneous,” Meserve said. “He [Tremblay] never regained consciousness.

“There was no braking before the accident,” Meserve added. “All indications are that the moose was just right in the middle of the road. By the time they realized where he was, it was too late.”

Marseille and the two back-seat passengers, Annie Du Perron of Laval and Sylvie Dupuis of Montreal, were not injured, but they were taken to Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln as a precaution. They spent the night at the Lincoln House Motel in Lincoln before heading home early Friday, a clerk there said.

They had come through Vermont from Quebec, Meserve said.

The Jetta’s speed was not a factor. Meserve doubted that Tremblay could have prevented the accident. Motorists looking to prevent such accidents can do little except keep their high beams on, watch the median areas of roadways and travel slowly, he said.

“The moose are so dark at night, it’s real hard for anyone to see them,” the trooper said.

Moose accidents are common this time of year as the warm weather and bugs drive moose farther afield.

Most such accidents are not fatalities, Meserve said, who has investigated six or seven this year.

The fatality was the second reported in that area of I-95 this week. Thomas Record, 66, of Patten died Monday in a two-vehicle collision in the southbound lane near mile marker 236. That case remains under investigation.