Strange

Google Maps "Street View" van hits deer and posts evidence

by TDH | January 30, 2009 at 10:59 am

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A Google Maps image collecting van recently posted an image of a young fawn traveling along side the van. The next photo, however, shows that same fawn motionless on the ground.

As part of the "Street View" service, Google uses vans equipped with cameras to capture thousands of images of mapped areas and presents them to viewers of Google Maps. The poor fawn was almost an unfortunate casualty (collateral damage, one might say) of the Google machine. This fawn, however, proved to be a tough adversary and managed a quick escape.

Deer collisions happen all the time, but rarely are they captured in an image and presented to thousands. After receiving several user generated concerns, Google has since removed the images and posted a response,

The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived. The police explained to our driver that, sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence in the region -- the New York State Department of Transportation estimates that 60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone -- and no police report needed to be filed.