It's getting to where I see almost as many hogs dead alongside the road as I do deer. This got me to wondering, which on would do the most damage to your vehicle? Let's say they were the same weight, and you hit both head on at the same speed, and same vehicle.
A buddy of my was a tool man that serviced many automotive repair shops in small towns here in north Texas (Montague, Cook, and Wise counties). He got to see a lot of damage done by animals on cars. Our conversations about such accidents spurred me in doing some research on the matter.
Long story short, hogs typically do damage from the grill and downward. Deer typically do most damage from the grill and upward. In other words, people typically hit and run over living hogs where as they hit living deer that they deflect off the vehicle. Deer sometimes come through windshields because deer often leap or bound when startled or scared. Hogs typically never come through windshields because that isn't how they typically run. Plus, even just standing still, deer are taller than hogs. Think of it as the difference between hitting a person standing up or a person squatted down. The person is the same weight, but what is going to get damaged when struck by the vehicle?
Contrary to popular belief, hogs no more cause cars to rollover than do deer. In every case I found where a car had rolled over after being involved in a collision with an animal (including one raccoon), the drive lost control of the car. Rollovers happened due to overcorrective steering (hard swerves a high rates of speed), hitting a curb while swerving, going off road into a ditch that resulted in the rollover, or lost of control in a field after going off road. The actual impacts with hogs and most other animals do not themselves cause rollovers, at least not in any of the cases that I found. In numerous cases, the rollovers actually happened quite a distance from where the animal was struck.
