Nearly killed by a kangaroo - hit or swerve???

J

Jarkari

Well-Known Member
When growing up and while learning to drive I was always told to hit an animal like a roo if it comes across your path. I thought this might interest some of the non Australian forum members. I have been away from the forum for a while becuase I recently picked up an 83 Nissan bluebird, to use as a paddock basher when the nieces and nephews come round. Halfway between Orange and the town I live in a massive roo jumped out in front of.
I went to swerve then remembered what I'd been told. Next thing I recall is the car starting to lose it. When the car came to a stop I was nearly a hundred metres from where I'd hit the roo, had rolled at least four time and the entire roof, except for he drivers area was lower than the boot (the bvack seat was coming out the back window. I just thought I'd let you know how dangerous one roo can be. I'll post a picture tonight hopefully of the damage and the comments made by the ambo's and police.
Also I'm interested to hear what you think? When something like that crosses your path do you hit it or swerve?
 
I tend to brake, but not swerve, a freind of mine swerved to miss a sleepy lizard and drove off a cliff (not a big one though, cliff that is!)
 
Swerve...

...without hesitation!

I was a passenger in a Peugeot 404 that hit a wallaby, smaller cousin to a 'roo.

The animal landed in my lap and the main reason I escaped with very little damage is that it hit the edge of the screen, top of the roof, as it came through the windscreen. Otherwise I suspect I would have had a lap full of a panicked animal with very strong back legs and VERY large claws.:eek:

As Dirty Harry says "Are you feeling lucky!" If not take evasive action.
 
if it is safe to swerve i would swerve, it all depends where the animal is on the road (lizards and stuff). You can hget a high pitched whistle thing called a roo shoo i know a couple of people with them they say they work.
 
We have one of those Kangaroo scarers on our car. Once we were riding some motorbikes near the river at our cousins house and a kangaroo came out of nowhere right next to my and I almost ran into a tree with fright. It didn't hit my 'cos it turned away before it could.
 
There has been two occasions that my mother accidently ran into a galah, hmmm yet they' don't seem to be afraid of the horn, in fact one of the times the galah actaully flew onto the front!, My brother when he went to central camp said that they Kangaroo as well even though the bus driver horned as he was going too fast to brake in time, apparently
 
I swerve a safe amount only. If you are doing 100 km/h that is not a very big swerve. Many more people are killed swerving for animals than are killed or injured by hitting them.
The last one I hit I was towing a boat and I braked as hard as I could. I felt 3 bumps as he went under the front tyre, back tyre and boat trailer tyre. By the time he would have come out the back of the boat I was as good as stopped. I walked to the back to see if he needed to be finished off and saw him hopping away.
 
I left out the bit I was going to say about Galahs. They fly away from cars the same way as from birds of prey. Their defence mechanish is to zig zag to make them harder to catch. This does not help them with cars as they tend to swerve back into the path of the car.
 
This roo was in a gully, it was dark and suddenly under my front wheel. I chose not to swerve as I was doin 100 km/h and hitting him let me keep the car on the road for an extra twenty metre into the ditch rather than into the trees I would have hit. this roo was also six foot. his head went under the front wheel which was ripped off at some point (the wheel not the roos head). I was told the police officer had her gun out to shoot the roo, apparently she'd heard some stories about them pretending to be dead. Though she also asked me if I was in the car at the time of the accident so. . . . I always swerve for smaller animals though, if possible
 
A few months ago our bus flipped with us in it because our bus driver tried to swerve from hitting a dog,lost control of the bus and then it hit and killed the dog anyways.
 
Also,alot of the wild animals where I live are kind of stupid.They can't decide which side they want to go to whilst sitting in the middle of the road before they finally brake out of there trance and they finally realise a car is about to hit them and it happens.Alot of the animals see you coming about 5 ft away but they decide to cross anyways with nothing good coming out of it
 
When i went to finland, they ran trips to the ice hotel (in sweden). According to the driver, on the way back, and just as they were entering finland, a herd of reindeer came onto the road. The roads were icy so the driver carried on going. He hit 3 of the 12 reindeer and for the rest of the journey everyone was very quiet. Then, at the end of the trip, a small boy went up to the driver and said: "Don't worry mister, they weren't from finland - they were swedish reindeer!"
 
If you travel on any of the night time Greyhound services in western Queensland you will become accustomed to the thumps as the bullbar collects yet another 'roo.

Should any of our overseas ZooChatters become alarmed at this I should point out that, since white settlement of this country, the populations of some macropod species have increased dramatically. They have benefited from improved pastures, more watering points and decreased dingo numbers to the point where, despite the road carnage and harvesting quotas in excess of one million annually for some species, their numbers are still increasing.

As Jarkari said at the start of this thread - you do not swerve for an animal on the road. Far safer to hit it slightly either side of head on. In other words, sacrifice one of your lights to protect your radiator.
 
Another animal that doesn't move are owls. It's happened a few times to us that they stay standing in the middle of the road staring at the headlights.
 
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