why were you going so fast that breaks wouldn't stop you fast enough IN A RESIDENTIAL ROAD? logic behind the residential area: there's the dog outside and the owners car immediately nearby... how often does that happen anywhere but at home?

you shoulda just hit the dog. if you hit a dog while your driving the owners of the dog have to pay YOU for any damages caused to you or your car.

you don't swerve for ANYTHING in the road other than for people or elephants. you should've let the dog get a Darwin award.

I"m an animal person and there's nothing i hate more than seeing a dead animal in the road, but you should NEVER swerve to avoid an animal because its just so dangerous, you could've flipped your car or what if the family had been standing behind their car? then you could've injured or killed people instead of the dog. It's almost always the best choice just to slam on brakes and hope for the best.

I would just hit the ******* dog. Of course, if I had the chance I would take my sweet time to make sure nobody was around me before I braked or swerved, in which case I most likely still would have hit the dog anyway. I hate reading about ***** who serve for small animals and end up hitting pedestrians or other cars. Like somebody else said, it's survival of the fittest. Humans > dogs. We buy dogs. We own dogs and dogs are our property. Technically it was their fault for letting their property dance around in the road, but it was also your fault for swerving, so **** everybody's life. What the hell was the family doing driving around while their dog was on the loose anyway? Christ...

For **** SAKE people unless its a human child and the only option is hit the animal or wreck your damn car, then hit the ******* thing. If you are in traffic or don't have enough time to react safely (i.e. check for other cars first) you could end up killing yourself or other people because you didn't want to hit some dumb-ass dog.

Don't get me wrong, i'm an animal lover too, but if you can't accept the consequences of reckless driving (YES! swerving when you don't have room and causing an accident IS reckless driving) then you should have just hit the dog. it would have been really sad and unfortunate, but at the same time as pet owners its their own responsibility to keep their animal inside or behind a fence and out of the street. how would you feel about this if you had ended up hurting a human trying to not hit this dog? And i read someone else mentioned countersuing, i know that most of the time this stuff is just handled over the phone and by insurance companies, but if you are by chance going to court for it i agree that countersuing for not keeping their pet away from the road would be a possible suggestion.

Overall that just really sucks, fyl. I would have just braked and hoped for the best. You do have to pay for hitting their car, because you did after all, hit their car. You could complain about the loose dog, you'd probably get some sort of case out of it. If you didn't swerve and hit the dog, it would still be a fyl, just not as bad I guess, it would be the owners fault for letting their dog out in the road.

should of hit the dog, then they would of had to pay for the damages to your car from it.

You swerved, so you are at fault. That is why you hit the brakes. It is much safer, and you won't hit anything else. If you end up hitting the dog anyways, you are still not at fault.