Tom Carter was sitting in his SUV at Yellowstone National Park on February 26 when something unexpected happened. Carter was filming several bison, which were running around in the middle of the road. Towards the beginning of the video, you can see the bison running towards the car but Carter had no idea it was actually going to hit it. As the bison got closer, Carter is heart on video saying, “Don’t run into our car!” just before the bison rams into the front end.
According to a report from USA Today, Carter seems to believe the bison were being agitated by vehicles on the road. “There is a line of cars that is chasing the buffalo,” he said. “Park regulations say you should not harass the wildlife and really what they should have done once they agitated the three buffalo is they should have given them space. But they did not.”
The bison did quite a bit of damage to the car, which is not surprising considering the creatures will often weight around 2,000 pounds and have the ability to run at speeds up to forty miles per hour. AAA estimates that the repairs will cost somewhere around $2,788. Carter even showed up close images of the damage in a followup video on his YouTube channel.
Carter’s video has gone viral since it was posted on February 26, reaching well over 2 million views. It has also been picked up by news outlets across the nation, as Carter pointed out in a comment he made on the video a few days ago.
“Well my bison YouTube truly went viral,” he stated. “USA Today, Good Morning America, the Washington Post, Associated Press, NY Daily News, Daily Mail (UK), and local TV news from coast to coast!” He also pointed out that, according to YouTube statistics, the video has been viewed in nearly 80 countries. He says he hopes it has given viewers “something to laugh about and forget about their troubles, if only for a moment.”
