An Edmonton man says he’s thankful to be alive after he ran into a moose at full highway speed while driving home from work late last month.
Ralph Brodt was working in the Whitecourt area on Nov. 23. Early in the evening, he started his journey back home to Edmonton in the dark. He was heading south on Highway 43, just past Mayerthorpe, when out of nowhere, a moose came walking onto the road.
“I just saw something white out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t even have time to react, it happened that fast,” Brodt said Thursday. “The next thing, glass was all over me and I was getting out of my car,” he said.
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An off-duty police officer was driving behind Brodt at the time. The officer somehow managed to swerve to avoid the animal. She pulled over and drove Brodt to hospital in Stony Plain.
“She told me, ‘I don’t know how you survived that incident,'” Brodt recalled. “She saw the moose come out of the ditch and run in front of my car. I hit the moose, I didn’t even have time to hit my taillights.”
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Brodt believes the moose was about two years old and weighed between 600 and 650 pounds. He captured the whole thing on his dashcam — the incident took less than two seconds.
“I was very, very fortunate,” he said. “Even the police officers in the Mayerthorpe area, when they were looking at the footage of it, they told me I was incredibly luckily to be alive. I’m very thankful to be alive… angels were looking after me that day.
“If it had been a bull moose, you and I probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Brodt’s car was totalled, but he walked away without a scratch.
Brodt said he’s been driving for 45 years and has never hit an animal. He said police arrived at the scene shortly after the crash to find the moose was dead.