An antelope jumped out in front of a motorcycle on Memorial Day, killing the driver and critically injuring the passenger. The Harley Davidson driver’s name has not been released to the public. He and his passenger were driving west on SR-12 when the bike collided with the wild animal.
Utah Highway Patrol troopers said the biker lost control and that both driver and passenger “fully ejected” from the vehicle. Both were also wearing helmets at the time of the crash, as well.
Emergency crews were dispatched to the crash site, Route 12 about 2.5 miles north of Tropic Junction. The Daily Mail reports the crash occurred around 9:45 am on Monday morning.
The crash remains under investigation; and authorities said they won’t release names until they have notified next of kin. Rescuers pronounced the driver of the bike dead at the scene, and they transported the passenger to a nearby hospital.
A few hundred miles east of the antelope motorcycle crash, a deer caused a massive six-car pileup in Ohio last month
Cleveland 19 News obtained the video of the interstate car crash via a public records request back in mid-May.
In the video, the animal begins running near Eddy Road in Bratenahl on the right shoulder alongside I-90 (left side of the video frame). The deer runs about the same speed as traffic for a few glides, but then it makes a major mistake. It veered headfirst into a small truck traveling in the middle lane, triggering the massive crash.
The deer only caught a glancing blow, though, and got knocked sideways into slower lanes of traffic. No other cars hit the deer afterwards, and it eventually got up and hobbled away. The truck driver, though, overcorrected (likely from shock) and went diving into the fast lanes and into another car. The two-car accident became a multi-car pileup once drivers in the left lane slammed into the rear of the cars ahead.
Bratenahl police said that drivers suffered serious injuries, though two drivers did go to the hospital. A few good Samaritans get out of their cars and rush toward the wrecks in order to help. The video footage even captures one of the helpers dragging an injured driver away from the scene.
What are the top five U.S. states that claim car accidents with animals?
According to State Farm, U.S. drivers had 2.1 million animal collision insurance claims in the U.S. between July 2020 and June 2021. That number was up 7.2 percent from the same period a year ago.
Those types of claims occurred most frequently in West Virginia, with one in 37 drivers making an insurance claim based on animal collisions. In Washington, D.C., just one in 569 made a similar claim, making it the lowest risk area for animal collisions.
The top five states for total number of animal-related claims in 2021 were Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, California, and North Carolina.
