Road Kill - A great idea, badly done, is a fucked idea.

The do-goody good dick heads have perfected the art of encouraging road kill...


It gets up my arse to a high degree, when no one "gets it" - and does anything about it, when blatantly obvious issues, arise from good and well intentioned ideas, that lead to totally fucked results for all concerned.

Now kangaroos, operate in kangaroo ways, and they are not stupid, but some things they just don't get - like significant speed differentials, where they are cruising at 60Kmh and another vehicle is doing 110Kmh plus.

They don't understand solid objects in the dark behind head lights, and they tend to travel on auto pilot - in a straight line with the brain switched off.

This all leads to wasteful road kill, and bad damage to some people and vehicles.

So a better way to minimise collisions between vehicles and roos, is for;

a) Slow down to 50 - 70Kmh in the late afternoons, overnight and early mornings when travelling through kangaroo infested areas, when the roos get mobile.

b) Set a fairly wide clearing away from the edge of the road, so there is no where for the roos to hide in and to enable most of them to be seen, most of the time, instead of bouncing out from behind a bush into the middle of the road.


As I travel through some areas, where the "bush" has been allowed to grow up to the edge of the guide posts on the side of the roads.

These overgrown road sides, have fairly large areas of state and national parks behind them.

And these are where large numbers of kangaroos live, and the bushed up road sides, are where the roos mostly cross the highways.

AND - fuck it - it's where almost all of the road kills from collisions are happening.

This:

One bounce and the fuckers are in the middle of the road..

Boing, "BANG"...  End of story.

And This:

Leads to this:

I am fed up with the bullshit - mostly the large tracts of highway around the country side, that in being so close to the road, serve only as fire hazards and launching sites for kangaroos.

It's clearly un-fucking-safe.



It's the combination of five issues:

1. These zones serve as a wildlife highway, between parts of forest with the highways and roads going through them - so obviously there is a higher statistical probability of the hoppy roos and the vehicles being in the same time, at the same place.

2. People have a tendency to ignore issues - like hazards. Denial, rationalisation and justification, and the tendency to do it, because everyone else is doing it - so people just don't "switch on" when travelling through kangaroo infested areas, nor do they slow right down.

3. You'd be surprised at just how many vehicles have piss poor head lights - I mean abysmally piss poor high beams......

That is the issue of the car manufacturers being cheap arse and stupid cunts putting cars on the roads with shit head lights., the ADR legislators, only stipulating beam patterns, never minimum lumens (light intensity / saturation) , and the idiot owners driving around with supercharged birthday candles for head lights and doing nothing about it (retarded fucking pricks).

The worst barely light up the white lines on edges of the road beside the car, and my single high beam lights up the reflective gear about 1Km down the road....

These should be the minimum standard for all halogen lamps.

http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/Product/Narva-Headlight-Globe-Plus-120-H4-12V-60-55W/324484

Supercheaps trade price is ~$45, the retail price is around $90, and you can buy them on Ebay for $48.

www.ebay.com.au/itm/NARVA-H4-120-PLUS-120-HALOGEN-LIGHT-BULBS-HEADLAMP-GLOBES-NEW-12V-48362BL2-/252071234355

So many vehicles have shit head lights, the manufacturers are arseholes and the vehicle standards "authorities" are dick heads, and the owners are clueless lazy fucks.

Shit head lights = piss poor visibility.


4. Allowing the bush to grow in a hedge like fashion, right up to the edge of the road is bad for two reasons:

i) The driver has basically no chance of seeing the roo prior to the collision when they jump out of the shrubbery; and

 ii) The kangaroos, when trying to escape, tend to become boxed in, and trapped, and they run up the road, rather than ducking into the bushes - which all in all, helps gets them killed.


Like because I ride a petrol sucking stallion, hitting a roo has significant implications - becoming dead is one of them.

At worst, hitting a big roo, square on, at the high part of the bounce, will smash my ribs flat, squashing my heart etc., and as the carcass slides over me, or I under it, it's an instant snapped neck.

The middle area is a rooned bike and a smashed up body and a shitty fucking holiday in a hospital (better things to do).

At the bare minimum, it's arse up down the highway, a few scrapes and bruises and a kind of a fucked up bike,


The sane solution is to have super good lighting, including side lighting, changing the ADR's for the clueless fucks who think lighting should only point directly down the highway, and slowing right down to 60Kmh and riding towards the centre of the road....

And moving out of the way, for the trucks and cars, when safe to do so.


The other part of this is a better implementation of the "Environmentally Sensitive Overlays".


So sniffing out an end to this bullshit, I dug up a Vicroads so sayer.

The response - "We mow the edges of the roads the councils tell us too and only to the guide posts, in these areas. You have to see the council.."



So I went to chase up a council - the response:

"These areas are called "Environmentally Sensitive Areas", so these come under the state planning schemes. We are only able to clear the vegetation up to the guide posts and no further. No clearing for another 5 meters beyond this or up to the fence lines etc. It's a state issue. Go see your local representative for parliament..."


And thus off on the telling bone to the local rep.


To be continued.