What to do if an animal jumps across the road in front of you.

If this is a normal situation I would consider giving up bikes and buying a tank, lol.

 

I was riding along yesterday and a wild turkey took off from the side of the road as I approached. I had to duck to avoid getting clocked in the head. Weird day~

 

Old thread now I know, but the roos are drinking from rain puddles on the road. Like parts of the USA, the central areas of Australia are quite arid and the wildlife takes advantage of transient sources of water wherever they can. The soil is quite porous so puddles stay much longer on the tar road. Water also runs into the table drains beside the roads and in low spots the grass can grow quite lush due to getting water from a larger catchment. Roos and other wildlife will congregate in those areas. At harvest time we also get grain trucks moving vast amounts of wheat, they leak and you see a similar pattern of behavior with animals taking advantage of the spilled grain. You also get vast flocks of galahs that eat themselves so full they have trouble getting off the ground. I have on occasion hit up to eight galahs simultaneously. Luckily in a car.

We have a lot of species of roos. They range in size from about a rabbit up to the Western Red that can stand taller than a man on their hind legs, they have been known to kill people, they kick and have big claws on their hind feet. They can weigh around 90 kg in round numbers 200 lb. Not sure what these ones are but they look to be a medium sized species, you would be looking at animals weighing in the 50- 120 lb range in that picture.

I hit a roo on my XT250 in 1991. Dawn, foggy, out in the bush, gravel road and it came up a bank on the side of the road and just burst out of the scrub straight under my front wheel. No warning, no reflecting eyes. Luckily for me it was a small one and the front wheel went over it and I spent a few very interesting moments doing a mono in the sloping loose gravel on the side of the road, trying not to fixate on the 8 foot diameter gum tree that was right in front of me. Luckily I was keeping my speed down a bit as visibility was poor and I knew that the roos are there. Kept it rubber side down and avoided becoming intimately involved with the tree. I honestly have no idea how. It wasn't skill on my part.

So my tips; know when the risks are high for animal strikes in your area, generally at night, but the above example is a good one of day time conditions increasing risk. Slow down, get rid of any tailgaters, maybe follow a larger vehicle through high risk areas. Be prepared for vehicles you follow to brake hard. Wear your good gear and keep those brakes covered. Don't expect them to behave predictably, stopping is better than swerving. Their evasion patterns are random and change too quickly for a rider to reliably work out where they're going next. Roos often don't look at you before they cross the road, they're following their own trails that happen to coincide with ours in places. So don't expect to see their eyes in your lights.

 

Shiet what a thread... Ouch! Freakng Deer, brings back a lot of not so good times ...

 

No telling what is going to run out in front of us when on the road from a pissed off rhino to somebody's dog that just likes to chase anything that moves.

Maybe a good idea since shit does happen is to dump all those fucking distractions like making believe the instrument displays have to be watched every few seconds, or the same with a GPS on a road that is in a straight line for ten miles, shooting the shit on all manner of comm devices, doing the change the station boogie on a radio or skipping tracks on Ipod, eating, drinking, hydrating, daydreaming about your favorite fast guy, waving at harleydoods, owling and dozens of other things that take your eyes off the road and your mind off riding your bike.

 

that's only a problem if you over tech your bike

 

It was weird seeing TNRabbit's post. I guess we'll still be seeing him around.
RIP

 

that is true, he was here before me. seemed to laugh at me when I fell down. I only dropped the bike once this year