Comment on Do those little plastic "deer whistles" do anything to keep deer from running in front of a car?
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
A company I worked for put them on all their vehicles one year to try and cut down on deer damage to our trucks. (About 45 vehicles or so)
Deer collisions went up immediately. At best they didn’t work, at worst it was actively spooking them… either way they were removed shortly thereafter and the incident rates started dropping shortly thereafter.
Cinner@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I wonder if this isn’t a different cause and effect scenario. If everyone in the company knew about the deer horns and believed them to work, they likely wouldn’t be taking the precautions they normally did.
Of course they don’t work, but I’m wondering if the placebo effect is what caused the accident rate to go up. Or an increase in deer populations that year, or land development, or etc.
But yes, they don’t work.
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I think it was more a matter of timing. It was in the fall around hunting season when more people are out running around in the bush and deer are on the move.
The whistles were our safety officers idea. The rest of us pretty much knew they were crap. (Or at least some of us did) The safety guy wasn’t too sure either but figured they were cheap enough to at least give them a shot.
It didn’t help matters that we were operating in an area with a very dense population of deer either. I’ve personally counted over 80 standing in a field by a road.