Most drivers on the Garden State Parkway worry about the usual hazards: aggressive lane changes, construction zones, and the occasional driver who treats 65 mph as a suggestion. A 44-year-old Hackensack woman can now add something entirely different to that list. On Tuesday evening in Paramus, a deer fell from a Parkway overpass and landed directly on her SUV below, causing enough damage to trap her inside the vehicle.
According to Paramus Police Chief Robert M. Guidetti, the woman was traveling north on Paramus Road in her 2025 Hyundai Tucson when the deer cleared a concrete barrier on the overpass and dropped onto the road below, striking her vehicle. Officers responded and helped the driver exit the car after the door was compromised in the impact. She was not seriously injured, which, given the physics involved, qualifies as genuinely fortunate.
The deer did not survive. Animal control removed the animal from the scene, and no other vehicles were involved. Chief Guidetti did not speculate on how the deer came to be on the Parkway overpass in the first place, but the road runs adjacent to Saddle River County Park along the southbound lanes near that stretch of Paramus Avenue, which provides at least a plausible path from woodland to pavement…