Drivers in western Colorado know to keep an eye out for deer and the occasional moose or elk that might stray onto the roadway. But on Monday night, a driver of a Toyota Prius ran into a bison in the dark on U.S. 40 west of Craig and lived to tell about it.
“The highway stayed open. There were no injuries to the driver,” said Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gabriel Moltrer.
The bison was killed in the accident, which occurred near milepost 74 at around 10:34 p.m. That mile marker is near the Lay Valley Bison Ranch. Efforts to reach someone at the ranch were not successful.
A Pew Trust study estimates that 1 million to 2 million crashes occur each year in the U.S. between motor vehicles and large animals, resulting in 200 human fatalities, 26,000 injuries and about $8 billion in property damages.
Colorado is considered a low-risk state when it comes to vehicle versus animal collisions, likely because such a large share of the population is concentrated along the northern Front Range, according to a study from State Farm.
In Wyoming, a high-risk state, about a fifth of reported collisions involve an animal, according to the Pew study. Drivers nationally have a one in 127 chance of being involved in a collision with an animal, according to State Farm.
Deer are the large animal most frequently hit on a road in the U.S., while collisions involving bison are very rare. Bison collisions are more of a problem in northwestern Canada, especially Alberta and the Northwest Territories, where wood bison roam freely.