‘Big black dot’ turns out to be turtle hurtling toward SC driver’s windshield

When his car was hit by a flying turtle Tuesday, a South Carolina driver was worried his boss would not believe why he was going to be late to work.

So John Gardner took pictures of his shattered windshield as well as the embedded tortoise to share them with his boss, who was understanding and amazed, according to Sharon Vaught’s Facebook post.

The turtle was not a new breed that is capable of flight.

Gardner said it went airborne after another driver struck the turtle, causing it to ricochet up and eventually into his windshield, according to Vaught’s post.

“I couldn’t even tell what it was at first because it’s like, I guess just a big, black dot coming at me,” Gardner said, according to WBTW.

He was driving on Highway 501 in Conway when the crash occurred, WFMY reported.

The collision left Gardner covered in glass but unharmed. The turtle was not as fortunate, per WBTW.

The auto body shop repairing his car for close to $2,000 said the turtle was killed “on impact,” according to the TV station.

In Vaught’s Facebook post, a person commented that some drivers try to intentionally hit turtles in the road.

There is no information to suggest that was the case in this crash, but a past study by a Clemson University student came to a similar conclusion.

After putting a rubber turtle on a busy South Carolina road, Nathan Weaver determined “seven of 267 vehicles intentionally ran over the turtle,” according to faunalytics.

Another study by a Florida State student found that a tortoise trying to cross a highway “had a 2 percent chance of surviving,” saying he had seen “a turtle shot through the air like a hockey puck after being struck,” Scientific American reported.

“I still don’t understand how it, like, the exact angle of that tire, for it to just fling into my windshield,” Gardner said, according to WBTW.