When a car collides with a moose or deer, certain statistics are collected.
Does the animal die and how does it affect population levels? Are people injured or killed? Where is the collision most likely to happen?
But those questions only provide a partial picture of its true impact contends Roy Rea, a University of Northern B.C. researcher who has studied moose-vehicle collisions for the past 15 years.
Rea suspects the impact goes beyond the immediate - "not just to the pocket book to fix the car but also psychologically to them" - and includes the emotional and long-term physiological recovery.
Material damages are one thing, Rea says, "but it's another thing to try and drill down a couple layers and find out how this affects people and how they drive."
Some still have nightmares. Others won't drive at night.
"It's just anecdote at this point," Rea says. "I really couldn't comment as an authority but in talking to people it's pretty clear that some people are really traumatized by this kind of vehicle collision."
To get beyond the anecdote, he's calling on people in Prince George and the north who have been involved in these types of accidents to help him with that research by filling out a confidential 20-minute survey.
"This is one part of the picture that we've never really looked at before."
By the end of the summer, Rea's hoping to have a better picture with at least a couple hundred participants.
He knows the region isn't short on these experiences: between 400 and 500 moose are hit each year, and that average jumps to 7,000 for deer.
"There's story after story after story. I think it's kind of cathartic for people to talk about it and get their story out and this (survey) is one way to do it."
Studying both deer and moose will offer a good comparison on the long-term health impacts, he said, given the drastic difference in size.
"Deer are so much smaller and they tend to bounce off the bumper most of the time," he said.
Moose, on the other hand, have a high centre of gravity and long legs.
"They slide up the hood and through the windshield and then they end up in people's laps, peeling the top off the car and these kinds of things," Rea says. "If they don't end up with some kind of physical injury, they end up with a palette full of moose poop or nostrils full of moose poop and it gets in their eyes and there's just guts all over the place, it just grosses people out.
"It scares the living tar out of them that every time they get on the road at night that there's going to be some moose."
He expects his findings would be useful in a number of areas, including the Ministry of Transportation, which he is already working with to reduce collisions.
Emergency room staff and ambulance operators could also benefit from better knowledge on what to expect for patient care.
"Their opinions may be based on dozen or two dozen accidents but if we have 200 peoples' stories than we may have a better idea," he said. "Do they need to go to counselling? Do they need long term care for neck or back injuries?"
For Rea, it's an underrepresented aspect of a phenomenon he's researched for years.
"I think if you want to really draw attention to an issue and you want some resources to be spent on trying to mitigate that issue or fix it, it's better to understand the whole picture than just part of it."
The confidential survey can be found online at pgc.cc/1LH9G9k .
