Oh my god that was so scary, dark as fuck outside going 55 on country roads when I see a weird dark spot ahead-oh fuck that’s a family of bears. I swerved and slammed the brakes and everything is okay but holy fuck.
It was a mother black bear and 2-3 cubs, they were super cute for the second I could see them.
I'm really glad you are okay and didn't crash into anything. It's always good to practice how to use your brakes and swerve in an empty parking lot somewhere. Your car handles a lot differently under heavy braking and spinning out after swerving and bifurcating your car on a tree happens more than it should.
How would you practice that? There's more and more deer crossing the very winding roads i take to work snd it's stressing me out
Go to a parking lot, go at what speed you would, and slam on the brakes as hard as you can and swerve away from a point on the road. Since all the weight is on your front wheels, you get a ton of oversteer and might spin. The thing about deer is that the recommendation is only to brake and not to swerve. You can survive an impact with a deer. Your safety is more important than the deer's. It's tragic, but it's better to kill the deer than to kill yourself. The best thing you can do when driving in deer country is to go slowly so you can react and stop faster.
Yes, it's good to go slower. Even reducing speed from 100 km/h to 70 will cut your kinetic energy in half and let you stop a lot sooner.
Hmm yeah I should maybe see about doing that. My friend did exactly what you described a couple years ago, swerved to avoid a sandhill crane and spun out and hit a tree. Terrifying.