While a motor vehicle colliding with a deer is not an unusual event on local roads, a collision involving a vehicle and a black bear is out of the ordinary.

As the number of local bear sightings has been increasing in recent years, it seems inevitable that bears will become involved in such collisions.

At about 8:08 pm on Halloween, October 31, motorist Michael Ouimette, 51, of Newtown, was driving a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country minivan southward on South Main Street (Route 25), near Appleblossom Lane, when a bear walked out in front of the moving vehicle, coming into contact with the left-front section of the minivan, police said. Ouimette was not injured, according to police.

“The bear then left the area,” police wrote in a report on the incident. Other details on the incident were not available. The police accident report indicates that the left-front quadrant of the vehicle was damaged by the impact.

Police Patrol Officer William Hull investigated the collision.

Lieutenant Aaron Bahamonde said police have not found an injured bear in the area. Police spend much time responding to calls from the public involving the presence of bears, he noted.

In Connecticut in 2018, more than 8,000 black bear sightings were reported to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). During the past 12 months, there have been about 170 black bear sightings in Newtown, according to DEEP.