I like to learn from strangers. An out-of-towner traveling by our store left this one for us. We got many of the details from the police scanner and the paramedics after a lady took her SUV into our river.

SURVIVAL RULE #28 - SELDOM SWERVE

--NEVER SWERVE TO MISS A 28¢ FOX--
It will cost you a $280 traffic ticket.
It will cost you a $2,800 wrecker/recovery bill.
It will cost you a $28,000 SUV.
It will cost you a $280,000 hospital bill -

IF YOU LIVE

This is good advice.

When I was a young teenager I learned that the paralysed fellow down the street in the wheelchair had been a jet pilot until he swerved to miss a dog on his way to work one night.

Swerve for humans, moose, horses and cows. Anything smaller probably isn't worth it.

A neighbor swerved to miss a deer and hit the guiderail. His insurance adjuster told him that his rates may go up because they consider him at fault. If he had hit the deer instead, they would not have considered it his fault. Go figure.

Or a 300 pound feral hog. Especially if it's rear end is facing you and you are driving a fabric-topped vehicle.

They hold a lot of poop.

-Blast

Depends on what you are driving. When I had a Geo Metro, I would have be afraid to hit anything. :P

Drive a jeep. I can clear almost any small animal. And, if they're any bigger, I got a nice steel bumper .
Seriously though, its not worth swerving, at all. I am not malicious, but I value my life moreso than a squirrels. Or anything small enough not to cause damage and/or loss of control.

I drive a 40-ton diesel truck. I don't swerve for anything. If I swerve to avoid hitting something or someone, I'll likely hit someone else - or roll the truck - or lose the load I'm carrying. (I mostly carry precast concrete. There's nothing like dropping a 26,000 pound block of concrete on somebody's car!)
I brake as hard as I safely can, hit the horns and keep the truck in the lane I'm in. I figure the trucks front bumper will move whatever's in the way (and, sadly, won't leave a whole lot left of it). Unfortunate, but I figure that truck isn't going to hit you unless you're dumb enough to get in front of it - and yet people still do! I'm in a vehicle that takes around a 1/4 mile to slow to a stop, yet almost ever car that passes me immediately gets directly in front of me. Scary! Sometimes I think I'm surrounded by future Darwin Award winners!

I have worked more than one wreck where someone, usually city folks, rolled their high dollar cars, endangering their entire family, for critters, usually something like a coyote. One of the last I worked put her car upside down in a waterfilled centerdivider, almost drowning herself and her son, to miss a jack rabbit! (which she hit and killed anyway). Long legged critters, such as deer, elk, moose, horse, you don't want to hit, they will usually slide over your hood and come right in thru the windshield. Really heavy critters, such as cows ('specially bulls), are to be avoided also. But smaller critters, hit them, your family is more important...

When I'm traveling at night through country, I tend to find a truck that is going my speed, and follow it at a safe distance. It isn't likely that any animal will try to get between me and the truck, so I figure the truck can handle it. It's better than having a deer come through the windshield.

Snoman, I've seen people do some of the craziest stunts ever, right in front of a big semi. On a long straight stretch in CO, I'm following a big truck, and watch a small red pickup pull out RIGHT IN FRONT of of the truck, from a dead stop, from the open desert, not a ramp or a side road or anything. If the road hadn't been completely open (2 lanes each way), and if the truck driver hadn't been as experienced as he was (obviously), there would have been either a large red splat on the asphalt, or a semi rolling over in front of me, or both.

The kicker: there were only four of us in sight: the red pickup, the semi, me (and the dog), and the State Patrol or Sheriff's deputy that was behind me.

And I usually think there's never one around when you want one.