When driving on the open road, particularly at night, deer walking onto the freeway can pose a safety risk for the animal as well as the people in the vehicle. For the people, the deer can weigh enough to damage the vehicle and cause bodily injury or even death. For the deer, the vehicle can kill or horribly mangle the animal. The impact alone can wreck the car's front end and damage the engine. Vehicles on the open road can also kill or mangle smaller animals, including rabbits, raccoons and other wildlife. Thankfully, there are several methods for keeping deer and small animals away from your car.
Turn the car's headlamps to the bright setting, illuminating the road with the goal of frightening the deer and other small animals away from the car. If the animal freezes in the glow of the bright light, turn the lights back to normal setting and pull the level to flash the bright lights on and off, with the goal of frightening the animal, while providing enough light for the animal to find its way away from the car.
Press the pad or button controlling the horn intermittently, with the goal of frightening the deer or small animal with enough noise to send it away from your car.
Install ultrasonic signal emitters to the front of your car using the adhesive pads, sticking first to the bottom of the emitters and then to the car. When the car accelerates above 30 miles per hour, the wind moving through the devices emits an ultrasonic signal that can only be heard by animals and is harmless to humans. The ultrasonic signal emitters, also known as animal whistles and deer alerts, cause animals to stop, keeping them away from cars.
Drive the mounting stakes into the dirt in the area desired for installation of the stationary animal repellent devices, which emit ultrasonic signals deer and small animals are unable to tolerate. Attach the animal repellent devices to the mounting stake along the road where deer and small animals are known to run into traffic, creating an electronic fence. The devices, which are both weatherproof and solar powered, are activated by infrared motion detectors in day and night, with a range of up to 30 feet.
Apply chemical repellent to ground plants and to the bottoms of larger plants near the roadside. Those animal repellents containing sulfurous odors have been tested and proven to be the most effective, although even the less-effective repellents have only been tested for their ability to stop animals from eating certain plants.
