Travelling Through the Dark

1)
The speaker was driving along, hit a "deer", and moved it off the road, into a river off an edge.
I put deer in quotations because a dear could mean more than an animal. The phrase deer in the headlights is a common phrase to describe people who are oblivious, and it is no coinsidence dear and deer are only one letter apart. Swerve in line 4 relates with swerve in line 17 because line 4 says to swerve means more dead. This is why he hesitates, but he knows "it's usually best to push them into the canyon."

2)
The car is always referenced with a lot of  imagery. The "glow of the tail-light" "the car aimed ahead it's lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust truning red" This does have  symbolic refference that comes alive when the speaker says "swerve". It relates to the car, when at rest the engine purrs, it's stable, but it recently has been going wrekless. It could be a symbol linking the speaker to the car.

3)
There doesn't seem to be a rhyme to the last stanza in the poem.