Moose in Winter: Alaska's Half-Ton Road Hazard

Back in medical school, John Sutton never dreamed he'd someday be called "Dr. Moose."

Sutton, chief of trauma services and associate professor of surgery at Dartmouth Medical School, earned the nickname by researching what happens to drivers who collide with moose.

Sutton became Dr. Moose after giving a presentation on the mammals at a recent trauma conference. Since very few people are stabbed or shot in small-town New Hampshire, Sutton focused on injuries people receive when their vehicles hit moose. His research attracted the attention of "National Geographic," National Public Radio, the Associated Press, and Carla Helfferich, who clipped the news story for me.

Sutton studied cases of 23 patients who were admitted to New England medical centers after striking moose with their vehicles. Their injuries reflect the tendency on collision for a moose's stilt-like legs to deliver the bulk of its body to a windshield or roof: seventy percent of the patients suffered head and/or face injuries. Six had spine injuries. Two became paralyzed. Two died.

Cars and trucks are hitting more moose than ever before in New England. Sutton estimates that about 250 moose are hit by vehicles each year in New Hampshire, and perhaps twice that many moose die while destroying cars in Maine.

In Alaska, the moose-crash toll easily reaches 700-800, and that's in a low-snow year, said Cathie Harms, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.

In a recent study, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities ranked the worst stretches of Alaska's highways in terms of moose-vehicle collisions. From 1988 to 1992, the Kenai Spur Road from Soldotna to Kenai earned the unwanted title of the state's number one site where cars and trucks collide with moose.

The main artery on the Kenai Peninsula, the Sterling Highway, was the most likely place to hit a moose. Thirteen stretches of road on or near the Sterling Highway were among the top 20 road sections where cars and trucks hit moose.

Outside the Kenai Peninsula, the most dangerous piece of pavement was the Glenn Highway near where it intersects the Parks Highway south of Wasilla and Palmer. A three-mile segment of road south of the intersection was ranked fifth.

At number 23 on the state's hit list, the most likely place run into a moose in the Interior was a mile-long segment of the Richardson Highway just north of Badger Road. Parts of Chena Hot Springs Road near Steele Creek Road and just south of Nordale Road were ranked 34th and 35th.

The most likely months to hit a moose in Alaska are December and January, according to the study. April and May are the safest months for both drivers and moose, the latter of which almost always die from the encounter.

Biologists I talked to said December and January are bad news for moose and vehicles for obvious reasons-dark days combined with the shadowy shade of a moose's chocolate-black coat. Cleared highways become even more attractive to moose when deep snow make traveling in the back woods difficult. Roadside brush clearing also encourages the growth of sweet willow buds, a favorite moose food.

To encourage moose from straying across asphalt, state department of transportation workers fenced the first four miles of the Glenn Highway out of Anchorage. When it was combined with street lights, the fence resulted in 95 percent less moose-car collisions.

Though fencing works, it's expensive and gets complicated when the fenced area contains streets or driveways. In their report, state researchers figured a person who commutes to work along one of the worst highway segments has about a one in 1,000 chance of striking a moose.

The chances are even greater in Sweden, where auto engineers have gone to drastic extremes to safeguard vehicles against moose. How drastic? In the past, they propped up moose cadavers and drove cars into them. Now the engineers use moose dummies made of rubber bladders filled with water. Discovering these methods leads me to a question: has anyone alerted Dave Barry?