Andrew English's column

By Andrew English

18th May 2008

	it doesn’t take Nostradamus to realise that slowing down gives you time to react if animals are in the road

I heard my first cuckoo the other day, my garden is full of nesting sparrows and frisky rabbits, and I’ve just read the reviews for the steamy new Sex And The City movie. Everyone’s at it for heaven’s sake! Spring has sprung, and as if to prove it, the carnage on the verges of our country lanes, A and B-roads is piling up. A litany of dead badgers, foxes, deer and birds litter the side of our highways. Just as the animals are foraging hard to feed their young, they venture onto the road and BANG!

It’s too sad, and it can be expensive. When road tester David Ross inadvertently hit a deer in Auto Express’s long-term SEAT Leon Cupra, it died instantly. And the damage to the car was substantial, too. The number of wild animals killed on our roads is hard to come by, but Jochen Langbein of the UK Deer Initiative has been collating figures since 2000, with the help of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the Highways Agency; the National Trust; the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Forestry Commission.

He claims that about 74,000 deer are killed each year, with the insurance industry estimating that up to 11,000 cars are badly damaged, with around 500 casualties and 100 serious or fatal injuries to drivers. The Deer Initiative puts the cost of deer collisions at £13.9million for private cars and £17million for commercial vehicles.

And that’s just deer. A recent Post Office survey estimated over one million wild animals and 10 million birds are slain on our roads annually. Figures from the People’s Trust For Endangered Species (PTES) suggest 100,000 foxes, 50,000 badgers and 15,000 hedgehogs are killed. “Road accidents have a big impact on the population of some UK mammals,” says David Wembridge of PTES.

Even insects take their toll, with last year’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency driver census suggesting that over half-a-million motorists blamed insect distractions for accidents that cost a total of £44million in car damage. They should ‘bee’ more careful!

I’ve got a badger sett across the road from my home, and the tiny cubs are an absolute joy. Cars do whizz past at high speeds, and it doesn’t take the soothsaying powers of Nostradamus to work out that slowing down a little gives you and the animal more time to react. Using your foglamps also helps, as they can illuminate an animal’s eyes as they approach the roadside.

Some drivers don’t care enough to slow down, though. Perhaps if the animals fought back it might change a few minds. Motorists in Florida, US, decimate between 10 and 17 panthers a year on their highways. It really is decimating, too, as the state’s total panther population is about 100.

Yet you don’t want to be winging a full-grown panther. Even bling cops Crockett and Tubbs from Eighties telly series Miami Vice might have met their match if a provoked panther joined them in their open-top Ferrari Daytona!

What about a penguin? They can do quite a bit of damage – especially if you are a tropical fish. Two years ago a truck with 25 penguins, an octopus and some tropical fish overturned in Texas. The unusual load was being moved from Indianapolis Zoo to Moody Gardens, a tourist attraction near Galveston. Four penguins died and the rest were battered and bruised, the tropical fish all mysteriously disappeared (the penguins weren’t talking) and the octopus was OK.

It could have been a lot worse, though – one hour ahead of the penguin truck was another lorry carrying snakes and alligators. Never mind ‘Deer Ahead’ road signs, what about signs saying ‘Anacondas and Alligators ahead’? That might concentrate our minds a bit more on giving wild animals an even break this spring.

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