spot lights and roos

I have no answer to that..lol

I hit a large hare in the Riverland on Easter Sunday night.
easter sunday u hit a hare????

Yeah I know I killed the easter buuny........I can guarentee it was a hare and I even tried to avoid it.

Where is Elmer Thud when you need him.

Regards Richard

That must have been a Hairy experience

See Dave if you had a Kenworth or even a DAF...LOL you would of not bent the bull bar....and if you had a Engle instead of a Waeco in it it would of been a differant story also not to say if it had a Toyota badge instead if the Nissan one it would of been.......

Regards Richard

Hitting the horn is the best way to collect a roo. it confuses them and often makes them double back from safety staight in front of you.
Ourspotlighting rigs always had massive claxton horns, when we were belting up a fencline to cut off roos headinfg from the padock to the safety of the scrub we would lay on the horn when we saw a roo was going to make it ahead of us. 30-40% of the time they would abot face and hop back in front of us into the paddock BANG

Think you might be right Olcoolone, I normally drive a Kenworth and I would average hitting one roo a week unfortunately, and the Kenworth bar is OK.
I must try a Wangle on the front of it and see how it goes.;<))
Another heartstopper this morning.
Driving merrily along and watching this emu walking towards the road. I reckon I will slow down because Murphy says that he will run straight across in front of me.
Murphy was right, and phew, I missed him.
Then after I breathed a sigh of relief, about eight chicks less than a foot high appeared out of the grass and ran across in front of me to be with Dad.
How I missed them I dont know, but they scattered just in time.
They certainly weren't a threat to the spotlights.

Dave

Powder puffs ar funny creatures.

Regards Richard

So true so true.

The last one I got totalled my ARB bar. It just laid the driving lights back so I was spotting possums but it didn't break a light.

One nano second I had clear road and the next I was hitting a roo.

Make sure you mount the lights behind the line of the bull bar. Put a straigt edge from the top bar to the lower bar of your bullbar and make sure all of the light is well behind that line. No garantees but it will help.

Duncs

I agree Davoe, I don't really see the point in spending big $$$ on spoties that light up the road more than 200mt down the road, any more than that and the wildlife is probably to far away to see anyway and 200mt is plenty of distance to slow down. I understand that trucks drivers would have a need for big, flash spotties but not cars and 4WD's. Another thing with spotlights is the further they throw light the sooner you have the switch to low beam when another car approaches.
I always run cheap Hella's or Narva's, that way if one is broken or lost I'm not that bothered.
Others would probably disagree, just my opinion.

Charlie.

Personally I don't bother with spotlights. The roo you hit is always the one that hits you. If you are driving sensibly, it is unlikely that you will hit one that is stationary on the road.

The main effect of spotties is to blind and confuse the poor critters which isn't a great deal of help in the circumstances.

Charlie and Warrigal,

The point of high output lights is to make driving at night safer. There is a lot more to this than simply spotting wildlife. The more information available to the driver the better. You can't see too much. The last roo I hit I still haven't seen. I did not hit it because it was blinded by my lights and did not move. I think it was travelling going at speed in a particular direction. It hopped into my path like a kid chasing a ball, totally unaware of my presence.

When I was living in Broken Hill I frequently travelled at night. Not all of this travel was for pleasure. I clearly remember one trip that was made at high speed during the early hours of the morning to transfer a friend from a small rural hospital to Adelaide. There was no ambulance available.

The roads in that area carry little traffic and using good lighting made my travel safer. I have never hit a roo that was stationary on the road, I have avoided many roos that I saw at the limit of my lighting. Frequently I have spotted roos and been able to monitor them as I get closer to them being able to move left or right on the road to put distance between me and the roo, or to slow down when roos start to move. This has saved many roos from injury or death as well as saving my vehicle from damage. With less lighting I would have less time to take evasive action.

I choose to have reasonable quality lights because they provide increased reliability, better light output and, in my mind, better value for money. I think about how I mount them because I believe by mounting them well I can reduce the chances of damaging the lights and impacting on my wallet.

Duncs

Hi Dunc

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. As you say, it's something you can choose to have.

Many OEM modern lights are so strong these days that we are frequently blinded on our country roads by people who don't anticipate oncoming traffic. This is, in my personal view, unsafe.

Adding extra lights simply compounds the problem and also provides a dramatic sudden drop in lighting from the driver's point of view which adds risk in some circumstances.

However if you feel a need to add on extra light power, it's your prerogative. In my experience, it will not necessarily make you safer from kangaroos.

Duncs you pretty much proved my point. The roo you hit hopped straight out in front of you with no chance to avoid it. These will always be the ones you hit.
The ones on the road and just off it are the "non movers" and are easily missed.
Driving work vehicles at night with standard lights I wouldnt give a damn what hopped in front of me and just kept the hammer down and NEVER had a close call with a roo I could see. The only near miss was a hopper straight out of the bush

Warrigal,

I agree with you about the responsibility to dip lights for oncoming traffic. This is true whenever you have high beam up even if it is just the standard lights. The need to do this early is even greater when you have big lights hanging off the front of your car.

My policy is to kill the driving lights as soon as I see an oncoming vehicle. That can be some way off out near the Hill. This is accompanied by a lifting of the right foot. The tough decision on those long strait roads is when to go down to low beam. I find that particularly when a vehicle has been approaching for some time it is difficult to judge how far away they are. I try to dip my lights before the other vehicles lights become a problem to me, and hope that is sufficient.

Davoe,

I have hit a roo that appeared out of the gloom at the limit of my lights. I was travelling towards the Hill approaching a bend when an on coming vehicle rounded the bend I dipped my lights and slowed down. This all happened pretty quickly as it sometimes does. When the other vehicle passed I noticed a roo on the road right at the limit of my low beam lighting, I jumped on the breaks and moved to the left to gain some time but the roo was determined and got in front of me.

The roo was not startled by the high beam or driving lights, it was actually looking the other way. It had been stationary on the road and probably moved when the other vehicle went past. It was not moving quickly but seemed to be determined to get in front of me. To this day I believe that if I had had my driving lights up I would have seen it sooner and been able to stop. Ultimately we will never know.

I think the driving lights help me to see a lot more than just roos and are valuable. They are not a guarantee and they bring a responsibility but they do help.

Duncs

Duncs

Duncs

The problem I see most often happens on bends and doesn't necessarily involve spotlights. Clear white headlights are so powerful these days that it's hard to discern the lights of oncoming traffic early enough to avoid blinding people in the worst of circumstances.

I think we need to educate people to enter bends and corners with their fingers already on the dip switch. People with spotlights should turn them off at the point of entry.

Joe

Some of those reserachers come out with the most outlandish theories.
You don't see many roos in the daytime, especially in warm weather, because they are in the shade trying to keep cool.
They continually lick themselves in areas where their blood vessels are close to the surface so that the wet area cools their blood a little. They just cannot stand the hot sun as they have no other transpiration method.
And as for jumping into the lit up area to get a better look. Yeah right!!!!!
If they were day animals really, ( a bit like us I suppose), they do a bloody good job of hopping along fast in the middle of the night.
Their eyes are more accustomed to the night.
Just think of how many of our animals are basically nocturnal.
The heat doesn't seem to worry the emus, they are out in the hottest days, and they haven't got predators either.

Over the last few months I have seen an average of more than a hundred roos a night each night shift I do, and I doubt that they come to the see what the hell the noise is.
They are basically very timid creatures and not curious at all.
In my opinion the noise spooks them and they try to get away from the noise.
The emus are the curious ones.

But, I am not a researcher doing a study, I just live in an area where there are millions of kangaroos.

Dave