Roo the day: evaluating the ShuRoo for prevention of macropod-vehicle collisions

Collisions between vehicles and macropods pose problems for road safety, animal welfare and wildlife conservation in Australia. We tested the ShuRoo, which is marketed specifically to deter kangaroos from approaching vehicles. We recruited 18 fleet operators with vehicles travelling consistent routes over long distances in rural areas: 59 vehicles fitted with ShuRoos and 40 vehicles without ShuRooss to act as controls. Drivers kept a log of collisions with macropods over an average distance travelled of 46,131 km. The overall mean rate of collisions with macropods was 1.16 per 100,000 km, with no significant difference between vehicles with a ShuRoo (1.32 ± 0.51) versus those without the device (0.68 ± 0.39). Drivers have the capacity to change their behaviour as a coping strategy to the presence of wildlife on the road, but risk a rebound effect if they believe the ShuRoo manufacturer’s claims and do not modify their driving behaviour to match the context. Rather than retro-fitting an ill-conceived device like the ShuRoo, an integrated, inter-disciplinary approach is needed to resolve the pervasive problem of macropod-vehicle collisions.