I've been in a car that hit a badger - friend of mine wasn't going fast - it was in a 30 limit and he was under the speed limit. Badger just leapt into the road a couple of feet in front of the car. Nothing he could do - by the time he reacted it was too late. Damn solid things though, badgers. It took out his bumper and radiator but apart from sadly being deceased, it looked perfectly undamaged
Did go back there after limping his car the few remaining miles home, just to see exactly what it was we hit and
whether it was injured. Met a car full of off-duty policemen who stopped to see whether we had problems and they told us to just leave it there when we asked whether we were supposed to do anything about it.
I've had two badgers leap out of the undergrowth at me before too, but since it was in a tiny single track lane both times, I was crawling along and was able to stop and follow it up the road.
Deer are bad on a particular part of the M4 too late at night. I've had a near miss in the slow lane when a deer that had been standing in the fast lane suddenly sees movement and runs back to the verge - fortunately there were no other cars about otherwise I might have hit something with some drastic swerving!
Same stretch of road a couple of years earlier a deer did exactly the same thing, missed the car I was in but then doubled back on itself again and hit the car following me belonging to another friend. Called the police since again we weren't sure if you had to report that sort of thing, but as long as it wasn't on the carriageway they didn't care and just told us to leave it.
Steve.
