How to prevent wildlife-related injury on the roads

Australia is a vast country with its fair share of big, wild animals, including sheep, wombats, cattle, kangaroos, wallabies and even deer.

A vehicular collision with any of these larger species can spell serious injury and even death for not just wildlife, but motorists themselves.

Why is it dangerous to drive on roads with wildlife?

Colliding with an animal itself can sometimes cause vehicle, driver and/or occupant injury if the animal is large enough. However, often more dangerously, rollovers and impacts with trees can result from attempts made to evade the animal.

In heavily-treed areas, such as near regional roads, vegetation acts as a noise-break, meaning animals (even those familiar with crossing roads) may not hear your vehicle approaching until they’ve already breached the tree line.

Driving in the days after rainfall also increases a motorist’s chance of encountering wildlife. By nature, roads are designed to expedite water run-off, leading to an accumulation in roadside gullies which act as a water source for animals to drink.

Adding to the risk, a section of road where an animal has already been hit and killed will lead to scavenging animals – such as foxes and hawks – gathering around. If the road design and conditions already resulted in an animal fatality, then this means the risk of further collision is amplified by scavengers.

In the event you do have an incident involving an animal, a Wildlife Recovery Kit may assist you in saving the animal's life.

Call 000 if you or your passengers are injured in a collision with an animal. 

How many crashes involve wildlife in NSW?

While deaths and damage done to animal colonies by collisions on-road – although sizeable – is more or less incalculable, the human road trauma tallies are much more exact.

Figures gathered from the 2015-2020 Centre for Road Safety Wildlife Collision Data report list 926 crashes involving animals in NSW that resulted in injury to humans during the six-year period.

Of these, 211 incidents resulted in minor injury, 369 in moderate injury, 330 in serious injury and 16 were fatal. Of all fatal road incidents, those involving wildlife contributed 2–3%.

Wildlife Road Safety Report

Driver education can help reduce wildlife-related injury on the roads

Like most incidents on our roads, many wildlife-related crashes can be avoided with proper driver education and behaviour.

The NRMA believes driver training needs to incorporate recognising when risks are high, and have drivers subsequently adjust their behaviour as a risk minimisation technique.

While this premise is universal when behind the wheel or the handlebars, a few specifics apply to safety around wildlife.

Improving education to reduce wildlife injuries

The NRMA believes the following focal points needs to be front and centre in driver education relating to wildlife if road trauma is to be reduced. These include drivers understanding that:

• Wildlife tend to be most active at dawn and dusk, so drivers will benefit from being more alert at these periods;
• Wildlife may tend to travel together and behave in a ‘herd-like’ manner.  If you see one, there are likely to be many;
• There is strong seasonality associated with wildlife collisions with a heavy skew towards winter, which might be attributable to shorter daylight hours, and;
• More prevalent signage is needed, and active signage (similar to school zones) is needed during high-risk periods.

* The carry cage in the video below is shown for illustrative purposes. The kits have been updated to a new lightweight and foldable core-flute carry cage.