Thursday 14 July 2011

Speed Kills ... Bugs

Won't somebody please think of the insects!

"There is great concern that the number of insects is decreasing," Dr van Vliet said.

Over the past six weeks, an analysis of information from 250 drivers was used to plot the total number of bugs killed by more than 7 million Dutch cars driving an estimated distance of 200.4 billion kilometres every year.

"On just the [number] plates, 3.3 billion bugs are killed. The front of the car is at least 40 times as large as the surface of the plate. Over a month, the cars hit 133 billion insects. Using the same statistics, British drivers, with 31 million cars, inadvertently kill up to 7 trillion insects every year."
I can see the ad slogans now. "Kill your speed, not a creepy-crawly", or how about "Save the bugs, catch a bus"?


7 comments:

Rational Anarchist said...

People have been driving cars for how long now? Obviously insect reproduction rates have increased to take that into account, so if we stop driving we'll be overrun in days!

Drive faster, save humanity from the insect invasion!

Angry Exile said...

How about 'Fuck 'em, they're insects' and 'BMW or DDT, your call, bugface'? Still, if it helps a bit I don't mind taking the registration plate off.

Michael Fowke said...

Has this Dr van Vliet lunatic actually been counting all the insects?

Leg-iron said...

van Vliet? No wonder it's bizarre. It's a relative of Captain Beefheart.

Those insects don't go to waste. I've watched sparrows in car parks. They hang around on the ground and fly up at the fronts of parked cars, pick off a juicy one and then settle doown to inspect the grille for more.

For them, it's a free delivery service.

Ian R Thorpe said...

I seldom splatter a butterfly or a bee yet yhey are in decline while mosquitos, houseflys etc. seem to be as abundant as ever.

Is there a 'scientific concensus' the affect this bug slaughter will have on the climate?

Ed P said...

The pesky little critters do make a mess on the paintwork and windscreen, but I find birds, rabbits, foxes & deer are more of a problem, as when you hit them the carcass is spoilt by having insects embedded in it.

Unknown said...

I've got more or less the same recording as Man Widdicombe, all good stuff. See the F2C blog.

John

Just typed in the varification 'elfbozo', and couldn't help but chuckle. Read 'elf' for 'health'.