Google's Street View camera car hits a baby deer

There has been plenty of controversy about Google's steady, stealthy and meticulous street photography as it builds up street level photography for its Google Maps 'street view'. Back in July, the street view car was spotted by many eagle-eyes techies, but Google seemed to want to preserve the mystique of the street view project by staying mum on its tour dates. That just made it all the more exciting when we did spot it...

Tragedy has struck though. In upstate New York, a street view car hit a baby deer on Five Points Road - and then recorded the whole thing on Google Maps. Nobody noticed until, well, someone noticed, prompting a Daily What blog post, floods of traffic, and then a sequence of five street-level pictures being removed from the site.

Google replied: "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."

They then proceeded to dish out some road safety advice: don't swerve, brake until the very last second before impact and if you do hit a deer, don't try to touch it. Just so you know.