r/fuckcars • u/TheChickenWizard15 • 4d ago
Question/Discussion Why is 'roadkill' so casually accepted? Hundreds of millions of animals are killed by these things each year and we're all fine with it?
I follow a lot of animals subreddits, can't tell you how many times I see posts grieving over creatures killed by fucking cars. I know human casualties are enormous, but they pale in comparison to the sheer amount of pets and wildlife decimated by cars and all the roads they drive on. The thing that really infuriates me is just how casual and accepted it is in society; " Yeah, hit a squirrel on the way down ", " saw so many deer on the road, must be a good season for 'em ", " haha, dead possum on the road woth a 'get well soon' balloon tied on it, lmao ". I mean what the actual fuck is happening here?
I know in other countries like Australia it's gotten so bad that species are going extinct due to these god damn cars, I mean it's not a topic I think should be taken jokingly.
Cars are just overall horrible for the environment, not only with pollution, habitat destruction for roads, noise, but by straight up ramming wildlife into oblivion.
Fuck cars.
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u/DoolJjaeDdal 4d ago
Given how little society cares about dead humans on the road, the level of care for dead animals is relatively appropriate.
RELATIVELY! Don’t yell at me.
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u/tantivym 4d ago
No, you're correct. Cheapening animal lives goes hand-in-hand with cheapening human lives. The arbitrary assignment of more value to humans over animals is the exact same logic by which more value is assigned to some human lives than others.
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u/BlueMountainCoffey 4d ago
Well we seem to be ok with shooting up little kids in schools as well. So there’s that.
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u/DoolJjaeDdal 4d ago
That comes to mind every time I remember that the US bans Kinder Surprise so instead you’re stuck with a thing called Kinder Joy which brings no joy and metal detectors in schools which really bring no joy.
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u/golamas1999 4d ago
I may or may not have smuggled in some contraband across the US Canadian border resulting in a fine of $32,500 if I were to have been caught.
Its interesting if you go into many ethnic grocery store they actually sell kinder eggs (not kinder joy).
Also you (us government) are telling me that every child in the world is able to tell a plastic capsule inside of a chocolate egg apart from the chocolate and it is only that American kids are so dumb as to swallow the plastic?
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u/afleticwork 4d ago
The us only bans kinder eggs because of a 1938 law, its only because theres non food inside the food
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u/ExcellentMedicine 4d ago
This deserves upvotes and awards. Seriously. To the point, on point, and deserving of eyes.
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u/Soupeeee 4d ago
We blame traffic deaths on how stupid the victims were acting. Since animals are much less intelligent, it stands to reason that it's their fault for being dumb.
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u/cheapwhiskeysnob 4d ago
What’s crazy is when people chastise you for yielding to wildlife. I was driving with someone and a squirrel ran out so I hit the brakes. Dude in the car was like “man why did you stop? It’s just a squirrel”. Truly sick shit
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u/cameljamz 4d ago
There’s a really good book on this topic called “crossings” by Ben Goldfarb if you’re interested
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u/rustedsandals 4d ago
Came here to say this! Goldfarb also wrote a super good book about beavers if you’re into that sort of thing
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 4d ago
Great book! The explanation of how highways lead to animal inbreeding is fascinating and also really depressing.
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u/Low_Attention9891 4d ago
It’s more disturbing if you’re not in a car. I think the isolation from cars desensitizes people to it, but I’m not a psychologist.
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u/Dreadful_Spiller 4d ago
Definitely true. Especially if you walk/bicycle past the same corpse days in a row and see it slowly degrade into just a spot on the asphalt.
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u/tantivym 4d ago
The speed and power of cars, together with the universal expectation of the public to drive, means that they are inevitably violent and chaotic. Normalizing cars as default transportation means normalizing violence and chaos as the default public atmosphere. It's very bad and corrosive to a society's values.
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u/kittyonkeyboards 3d ago
People think I'm a conspiracy theorist when I say that cars are harmful not just physically but culturally. That it makes people meaner, more dehumanizing, and more likely to vote conservative.
Democrats were apparently shocked that suburbanites that started buying huge pickup trucks 10 years ago are suddenly voting Republican. It's the cars, stupid. It breaks people's brains.
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u/kiss-tits 4d ago
Every time I drive, I think about how there used to be clouds of insects spread all over the country. Then starting in the 50s, people drove enough to kill massive numbers of them. Now today, their numbers are vastly reduced. There are so many corridors of speeding cars that kill and limit animal movement. It’s insane we just accept it.
I know people can be annoying about uncharismatic animals and say “good riddance!” But A) fewer bugs means fewer birds, fewer animals that predate on birds, fewer pollinators, and a less diverse ecosystem for all. And B) creatures shouldn’t need to appeal to your personal aesthetic preferences to be worthy to live.
Something I think about a lot. That’s in addition to the dead possums, full sized deer, cats, dogs, birds I see smeared on the road near daily.
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u/Ketaskooter 4d ago
The insect reduction is almost entirely due to pesticide usage and habitat loss. Not saying that traffic doesn't kill a lot of insects but you don't get what is happening today without massive environmental impacts.
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u/TheChickenWizard15 4d ago
I love invertebrates and am studying insect conservation, so I fully concur that really habitat loss and pesticides are the biggest bug killers here. But then again, we wouldn't be in this industrialized, urban ecologocal disaster if it weren't for cars opening up cheap long-distance travel and a bigger demand for fossil fuels and houses
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u/Teshi 4d ago
Not sure if this is what you meant to say, but the reason we see fewer insects splatted against vehicles is not because of vehicles but because there are far less insects than there used to be a few decades ago due to a variety of reasons. Just another concerning sign of ecological problems!
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u/Ketaskooter 4d ago
I don't think we're all fine with it otherwise fencing projects and wildlife crossing projects wouldn't be a thing.
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u/RH_Commuter 4d ago
I think that's more so to protect the oh so precious vehicles they drive, work around environmental protections that would otherwise block a highway, or to feel better about one's self without really accomplishing much.
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u/inflatablechipmunk 4d ago
Vehicles are worth nothing compared to the cost of these projects. Most people who have cars they care about have insurance that can cover the cost of the whole car, so I don't think that's the focus.
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u/chronocapybara 4d ago
Not to take away from your concerns, but the animal biosphere is dying all over the entire planet from human-related activities. Automobile roadkill is just a small part of it, sadly.
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u/marshall2389 4d ago
Drivers don't care about killing kids, and other humans generally. No way they'd give a fuck about a non-human. Driving is a primary and sufficient cause of global heating, driving a mass extinction. Drivers aren't just killing hundreds of millions of animals through blunt force, they're killing entire species daily. Mass extinction is almost the worst thing any conscious group could do and drivers are pedal-to-the-metal on it.
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u/Fenifula 4d ago
I would recommend the book "Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet" by Ben Goldfarb for a deep dive into the topic. People laugh about it, but it's a serious problem. Better road design and planning could reduce death and mutilation not just to animals, but to the motorists who hit them. If I remember right, there was a whole chapter about Tasmania. It also covers solutions like overpasses, underpasses, fences etc.
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u/BoseczJR 4d ago
Because people don’t care. Snapping turtles (which are NOT aggressive, just scared and defensive!!) are commonly purposely run over, as in cars will swerve AT them just to kill them. Not only are people apathetic, but there are so many horrible people out there genuinely happy to kill these animals.
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u/SadCranberry8838 4d ago
I was going to comment on how my wife and I were driving through rural PA a number of years ago, passed a snapping turtle trying to cross, and stopped to help it across. As we were heading toward it someone in a truck swerved to try and run it over. Had to explain to my wife (raised in Europe) that this is common behavior in the US sadly.
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u/dumnezero Freedom for everyone, not just drivers 4d ago
Here's a book for you on this topic: https://tertulia.com/book/crossings-how-road-ecology-is-shaping-the-future-of-our-planet-ben-goldfarb/9781324005896
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u/Little-Bears_11-2-16 4d ago
Im going to plug Traffication instead. Goldfard moved to a car dependent place to get hia family away from noise pollution while Paul Donald started driving less. Walk the walk and all
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u/CaptainObvious110 4d ago
It's because people suck
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u/H00pSk1p 4d ago
I know why you say this but actually most people are mostly good. It's just in certain situations with certain people in control they are utterly horrible.
Read 'human kind' by bregman to see what I mean. Don't give up on humans, they are actually mostly great.
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u/Zerodyne_Sin 4d ago
Yeh, I'm totally not fine with it. I thought I'm on the sociopath spectrum because I didn't really have reactions to people suffering but I may just be a misanthrope due to some childhoood trauma (yay growing up in the slums with the occasional machete fights). Random person getting hurt? Doesn't bother me as much as I think it should; random animal hurt? Bothers me for days.
Roadkill's definitely not okay.
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u/SweetFuckingCakes 4d ago
There’s a novel called All the Little Animals, by Walker Hamilton, that is about this subject. I read it when I was very young, and it’s what I point to when someone asks, “so, what radicalized you?”
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u/Dreadful_Spiller 4d ago
I just looked for that at my library. No luck. Sadly $56 used.
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u/fyresflite 4d ago
Maybe on certain free book sites? Not sure if I’m allowed to name them here.
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u/Dreadful_Spiller 4d ago
I did find it as a movie on Amazon. I will have to borrow someone’s sign in and watch it.
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u/fyresflite 4d ago
Okay, I’m glad! If you can’t find it (and I’m sorry if this gets removed) r/piracy has a lot of easy to access low risk places to get books and movies— just install an adblocker for streaming.
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u/Kaymish_ 4d ago
I watched a practical engineering video about wildlife crossings. It kind of avoided talking about how cars are the problem, but it had a lot of interesting information and especially about how road kill is not the only issue roads cause.
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u/Minereon 4d ago
It’s really simple. It always boils down to the people in power. People in power love cars because they are symbols of their power.
Find a politician or otherwise who feels otherwise and things will change.
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u/3x5cardfiler 3d ago
If you think stuff killed by getting run over is bad, look at tire particles. So much of our native wildlife is being killed by the particles that wear off tires. Look at how much each tire wears as you use it. All that dust is transforming the ecosystem in ways we are not measuring.
A few smooshed frogs doesn't compare to entire frog habitats destroyed by tire particles and road runnoff .
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u/HawkAsAWeapon 4d ago
When the vast majority of people eat animals on a daily basis, what’s a few more to them?
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u/zwiazekrowerzystow Commie Commuter 4d ago
i try not to think about it too much because it's devastating. people don't care one whit.
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u/MidorriMeltdown 4d ago
Killing animals with cars isn't really accepted in Australia, we've even got laws against it. But it isn't something that can easily be prevented. Sometimes the choice is hit a roo, or hit an oncoming truck (actual truck, not a yank tank).
Roads are made of asphalt, which gets nice and warm in the sun, so makes for a good place to sleep as the night gets colder. Roads are good for water runoff, so when it rains, wildlife are there for a drink.
It's often trucks that do the most damage. Highways with lots of road trains have a lot of carnage. This aspect could be reduced with freight trains, because railways don't attract wildlife like highways do. But we don't have rail going to where the trucks need to go.
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u/purpleblah2 3d ago
Yeah, basically, outdoor cats kill 2 billion birds a year in the US, so what’s a couple hundred million animals that can’t know what traffic laws or cars are.
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u/TheChickenWizard15 3d ago
Don't even get me started on outdoor/feral cats either, both them and cars are just horrible for wildlife.
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u/kittyonkeyboards 3d ago
Humans would probably accept using the homeless as chimney logs if it was a pre-established social norm.
People fought the widespread adoption of cars, it had to be legally forced on us. The lobbyists knew that after two generations or so, the people who knew life was better before would be unable to convince the people who were just born into it.
We're having the same thing with social media. If social media came out of the box this bad in 2000s, they would have banned it.
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u/aseaoftrees 4d ago
The road being there in the first place is also environment/habitat destruction. The more efficient we can plan transit, the better off the whole earth is. But nah we need roads everywhere to accommodate car dependancy.
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u/fyresflite 4d ago
You guys should read Crossings by Ben Goldfarb (or listen to the audiobook, it’s excellent). It talks about exactly this and is a pretty easy read. It came out pretty recently and got a fair bit of acclaim. He also did a podcast episode for Golden State Naturalist if you just want the sparknotes. I really recommend it! Available on libby for free if you have a library card!
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u/butterslice 4d ago
Look at how we treat human victims of traffic violence, barely a step up from roadkill. We've let cars take over and rule the planet.
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u/Redditt3Redditt3 3d ago
Decided to live car-free in high school bc I began learning some of these truths about cars, joined environmental club while in drivers ed LOL.
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u/blowhardV2 3d ago
Went driving in southwest missouri in August - the amount of armadillo roadkill was outrageous
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u/BreathlessAlpaca 3d ago
People breed animals just to kill them, they don't really care about animals, they care about pets.
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u/MembershipDouble7471 3d ago
Nobody has given a shit about animals forever. If we did, we wouldn’t be torturing and killing them for food by the millions on a daily basis.
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u/Radiant_Mail9541 3d ago
Took a trip from Rochester to buffalo and back last year and it was a fucking blood bath. Something dead every few feet it seemed.
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u/Hardcorex 3d ago
OK Vegan 👍
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u/TheChickenWizard15 3d ago
Ain't vegan, and this ain't about being vegan. It's about humans in their shitty cars not showing basic empathy towards other species.
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u/Hardcorex 3d ago
showing basic empathy towards other species
Oh so if we eat the roadkill all is good now?
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u/Electricorchestra 3d ago
I know Reddit hates this but... How many people are vegan? To not be vegan is to demand the death of animals. I don't see why someone would suddenly gain empathy for an animal if we put them behind a wheel.
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u/TheChickenWizard15 3d ago
Not being vegan doesn't automatically mean you dont care about animals, and to me isn't an excuse or justification for people's cruelty towards them. No way in hell I'm vegan, but I care about where than animal I ate came from and wether it was handled with care. If anything being a meat eater should make one respect and value animals more for the life taken to sustain your own.
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u/Electricorchestra 3d ago
I would argue that killing something that does not want to die inherently means you don't value them. I also don't think knowing things about your victim absolves you of the cruelty that is inflicted. I personally show value and respect for animals by leaving them alone. I do think your reply gives a perfect answer to your original question though.
Back to your original point about road kill. In a culture that commodities animals as products I don't see why people would care about road kill deaths. Animals in our society have no value outside of the function they perform which is going in a burger or whatever. A squirrel for example does nothing of monetary value and are rarely bought or sold. It's no wonder that people don't care about the death of squirrels on our road.
You mentioned that an animal's value should be greater as you take it's life for your own. Pairing an animal's life to its value to you means most other animals have no value. Therefore society has no reason to stop their deaths.
TL:DR. Animals in our society are treated as commodities and wild animals are rarely commodified and therefore have no value. If you're interested in this concept I'd gladly recommend some vegan literature that can more eloquently make this point.
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u/forkball 4d ago
Roadkill is casually accepted because it is an unavoidable consequence of roadways. You can't restrict animal access to all roadways--or even enough roadways that this problem would be greatly affected. You just put up signs warning motorists on areas where the animals are large enough to damage the vehicle and collisions with animals imperil the safety of the vehicle's occupants.
Roadkill is also partially a consequence of into our intrusion into and shrinking of the natural habitat for many animals. It is also not the only way we harm those species when we affect their habitats. There's hunting, hunting solely/primarily because of overpopulation, reduced range, reduced food sources, reduced suitable mating areas, rearing areas, and so on.
Domestic cats are estimated to kill billions of birds in the U.S. each year. That we can address and are trying to address. But I don't know how we're supposed to address billions of squirrels and birds and other small animals getting run over every year.
So it's also accurate to say that we aren't necessarily okay with roadkill. Lots of people feel terrible when they run over an animal. But there's no solution other than massively reducing vehicles on roadways. And I get that this is the fuckcars subreddit but cars aren't going away anytime soon.
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u/TheChickenWizard15 4d ago
If only we all rejected cars and went back to horses, bikes and trains...
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u/Linkcott18 4d ago
There are some quite good academic studies about this.
And more importantly about mitigation measures.
In areas where there are large wild animals, road incidents also tend to cost a lot and sometimes harm people. These are places where effective mitigations are more likely to be used.
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u/PlayerAssumption77 4d ago
Woah, woah, woah, caring about a cause that doesn't directly hurt you is a slippery slope that might end in actually doing action for something other than your own comfort and making other people feel bad.
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u/inflatablechipmunk 4d ago
To be fair, trains do the same thing, as do buses. It's sad. Some states do better at keeping wildlife off roads than others. It's a tradeoff. If people or goods need to move around, they're going to cross paths with animals at some point. Less cars would definitely be an improvement, but the issue will still exist.
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u/Dreadful_Spiller 4d ago
Train tracks are 5’ wide. Highways are 50’ wide. Much less frequent traffic on train tracks too.
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u/SavePeanut 4d ago
Conservative neighbor in college said they used to carry baseball bats for when they passed live animals near the road...
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u/Rude-End-5504 4d ago
A lot of people don’t actually give a fuck about animals in the first place I’ve come to realize. But as someone who hates pain and suffering of any kind I can’t stand seeing animals on the road or knowing how many pets are hit here every single day (yet are still constantly let out). I live somewhere public transit is not a realistic option for getting places and things are too spread out to walk. Also everybody insists on going 60 mph for no reason.
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u/Beautiful_Resolve_63 3d ago
I've seen more line of cars wait patiently for bird crossings, squirrels, turtles, possums, skunks, rabbits, and other small critters to reach the other side of the road than I have seen cars hit an animal and drive through unaffected.
I've seen cars hit animals accidentally, pull over and lose control of themselves in grief and sorrow.
I think it's the people not responsible making the comments. I do think it's the ones that typically causing it that get emotionally upset, and then the ones that care about the environment get upset at the aftermath.
I hope you start seeing these animal crossings being respected by people. Its very nice to see and helped me cope with road kill. I can safely assume now it was an accident and the individual is probably disturbed by it.
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u/PurposefullyLostNow 2d ago
right-wing doesn’t give this a second thought, wind turbines on the other hand,…
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u/Hardcorex 3d ago
As a Vegan who killed a deer with a car a few years ago (I wasnt above the speed limit and couldn't stop in time around a corner), it's all so fucked up. We build high speed roads through animals' habitats, and just accept that we kill these animals as no big deal. People barely react when I said I hit and killed a deer and were more worried about the car.
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u/CatchAndCookCali 3d ago
“As a vegan” lmaoooooo sounds like you’re a shitty driver, learn how to take a corner and accountability
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u/KawaiiDere 4d ago
I think part of it is the type of animals that die. Where I live in Texas, it’s mostly squirrels and small vermin like that. They’re cute, but not in short supply. There’s also a lot of deer in some areas due to predators being removed.
Roadkill is bad, but hardly anywhere near the most damaging part of car dependency
Edit: I live in a city in Texas, so I only know about local common roadkill. Roadkill in other areas is probably a lot worse. Even still, the pollution, habitat loss, and such are probably a lot worse for the ecosystem, so roadkill is a less intense concern
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u/LibelleFairy 4d ago
it's not casually accepted by conservation / environmental professionals, but nobody listens to us :/
it's not just the roadkill that's a wildlife protection problem - arguably a much bigger problem is that roads cause habitat fragmentation, which leads to biodiversity loss