Sounded like a joke? In any case, swerving to avoid/hit a small animal is quite dangerous, and leads to crashes. If the animal isn't big enough to cause significant damage (I've heard "smaller than a medium sized dog", dunno if that's a accurate) then you shouldn't do any evasive maneuvering.
Most likely a sane default but I would think also strongly circumstantial depending on traffic, current speed and weather/light conditions.
As the pinnacle of the animal kingdom we should be able to come up with smarter solutions.
I always liked the story of Andrew Hallidie, the man behind promoting the idea of the San Franciscan Cable Car - he and his main engineer William Eppelsheimer were motivated to find a better solution to what was to a high-degree an animal welfare issue.
Street cars in SF during the late 19th century used to be pulled by horses which both was dangerous for them as well as passengers:
"I was largely induced to think over the matter from seeing the difficulty and pain the horses experienced in hauling the cars up Jackson Street, from Kearny to Stockton Street, on which street four or five horses were needed for the purpose–the driving being accompanied by the free use of the whip and voice, and occasionally by the horses falling and being dragged down the hill on their sides, by the car loaded with passengers sliding on its track.....
.... With the view of obviating these difficulties, and for the purpose of reducing the expense of operating street railways (tram-roads), I devoted all my available time to the careful consideration of the subject, and so far matured my plans that I had California Street (a very steep street in San Francisco) surveyed [between Kearny and Powell streets, a distance of 1,386 feet] in 1870 by an engineer of the name of David R. Smith, and in the Sacramento Record, a newspaper published in the City of Sacramento, California, in 1870, a statement is there published in its telegraphic news of what I proposed to do, viz: to run a rope railway to carry passengers from the city to the plateau above."
Where did gp say anything about a car in front of theirs?
I grew up driving in Buffalo, NY, and if that doesn't evoke visions of black-ice covered frozen tundra roads, it should. One thing I know from having learned here is, a deer can jump out of the brush at any time. You don't want to hit a deer. Even if you have comprehensive insurance there is a very real risk of bodily harm to yourself, deer are large and probably more likely to survive than most small animals, if you don't have a hunting knife or a gun, you might even be waiting for police or animal control to come and put the thing out of its misery, if you weren't going fast enough to kill it.
The same is true about small animals - they can jump out at any time. But on snow-covered roads, they are more dangerous to you if you try to avoid hitting them than if you just keep going. Especially don't swerve. You might be driving too fast if you can't safely come to a stop when an animal jumps out in front of you, or you might just have bad luck and timing.
Anyway, if you had to stop (or thought you had to stop) and got rear-ended, there is unfortunately not much you can do about the guy that was driving too close behind you.
I don't think it's so much about the car in front as the cars behind, oncoming traffic, and obstacles on the sides of the road (curbs, medians, trees, signs, drop-offs, ...)
