I hit a black bear Sunday in my 2017 SR5

Sunday. I'm doing 55-60 mph, alone on a straight, divided country highway. An adult black bear appears about 50 feet ahead on the right side. I'm estimating 350-400 lbs. Not sure where it came from but it was bent over on all fours, looking at me and running directly into my path. I slam on the brakes.

Skidded to 50 mph. Bear turned slightly at the last second, maybe realizing something was wrong. Impact was hard but the bear was now past the midpoint of my truck. It was struck in its hindquarters, by the center-driver side bumper and license plate. We both slowed down dazed but continued moving forward. Even slightly different timing or positioning could have left us each in a very different state.

I'm now at 25 mph, rubbernecking, staring in partial amazement. Bear has a slight limp. It reached the median, ran sideways until a car passed, then darted across quickly and into the woods.

I was expecting the front end to show heavy damage. But the pro grille and surround appear untouched. Hood alignment is okay, no damage to TRD headlamps. The bumper collapsed as designed. I'll get it off this weekend, been meaning to replace it anyway. There are hairs in the screws on my license plate. Maybe a little bit of blood on the bottom of it.

That bear really hadn't wanted to meet. It knew to watch the road for me. It seemed to be looking right at me, but it didn't see me, it wasn't looking far enough ahead, and couldn't gauge my velocity until the last second. It had to be seriously injured.

I saw this coming and couldn't stop it and I hated everything about hitting that bear. It's a negative externality of man + combustion + asphalt. But after impact I was more awestruck. Imagine taking a 50 mph hit from a Tundra and walking away. This thing ran.








Edit: Had I thought about it I would have posted this in a different forum.

 

Wow, glad you are ok.

 

Tough truck...tough ass bear..could have been way worse

 

Also glad you are okay.

 

Glad you're ok and that the truck held up to the impact.

Bears are tough buggers. I'm sure he'll be fine, don't lose any sleep over it.

 

Thanks everyone. Whole thing was crappy. But also, awesome. I love that bear. And this truck. It drove 5 more hours to get me home.

 

Don't touch anything until your insurance company has a chance to have either an adjuster or their body shop do an estimate.

Animal collisions are covered under Comprehensive coverage and are considered not at fault incidents. Won't affect your rates. You still have to pay the Comp deductible, but you may be able to have the shop upgrade to an aftermarket bumper less the cost of the factory bumper. For instance, if an OEM front bumper assembly is $500, and an aftermarket bumper is $900, then it will only cost you $400 to have an aftermarket bumper installed.

I did this for a living for about 6 years for USAA.

 

Crazy. Glad you are good and great advice above regarding insurance.

 

Man that’s scary. Glad you’re OK and it looks like your truck will be just fine. Just a little bruised. And I hope the bear makes it OK. Poor guy

 

Best time to do an upgrade, but WITH the insurance guy advice!

 

Looks like a little Boo-Boo

 

Imagine the ways this could have gone very differently...

Glad you’re ok.

 

Sucks when you hit an animal and can see it coming and there’s nothing you can do. I’ve hit and killed two moose now. First one with a Dodge Colt(me in hospital and moose dead), and the second one in a CJ-5(me with scrapes and moose dead), luckily no one was with me as the passenger side was basically wiped clean. A Tundra would have made a world of difference both times!

 

I can just imagine it looked like this

 

Or like this

 

You can get it fixed. In the meantime, you'll have to grin and Bear it.

 

He's gonna have a sore ass for a while. I'm surprised it didn't do more damage to him or the truck

 

Whoa... That could have been worse.
You could have pissed that bear off.

 

Here's a link to a list of all of the parts associated with replacing the front bumper. So far, likely parts list is around $650.

https://parts.olathetoyota.com/auto...ine/body-cat/bumper-and-components-front-scat

 

If you had this on a dash cam video, that would be a badass video.

 

If toyota put a decent bumper on the truck you wouldn't have had any damage. I plan to replace the plastic POS bumper with a real steel one soon. The bumper is one place I think Toyota fails with the Tundra. It doesn't really do anything that a bumper should really do and its plastic to boot.

 

Sorry about your truck. Hopefully the bear escaped with just some bruises.
This post reminded me... several years ago a guy hit and killed a bear on I 99 in central PA on Thanksgiving morning. I was at my aunt and uncles for the holiday and my uncle is a game warden and got the call. The man said he'd hit the bear and he and his buddy had recovered it and taken it to his house and wanted my uncle to come out and issue a tag so that he could legally keep the bear. My uncle asked if I wanted to come along and I said sure. At the guys house the bear was laying stretched out in the front yard. So my uncle and the two men go over their story, he writes a report, issues a tag and begins to do an examination of the bear. As the three of them are bent over looking at the teeth I gently nudged the rear end of the bear and let out a little RRAAARRRHHHH. The three of them just about jumped out of their skin. Apparently I was the only one who thought it was funny.

 

I prolly would've Pepper Sprayed you just for principles sake!