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Wildlife warning reflectors do not mitigate wildlife-vehicle collisions on roads.
Journal article

Wildlife warning reflectors do not mitigate wildlife-vehicle collisions on roads.

  • Benten A Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zones, Forest Sciences, University of Göttingen, Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany. Electronic address: abenten@gwdg.de.
  • Hothorn T Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zürich, Hirschengraben 84, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Vor T Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zones, Forest Sciences, University of Göttingen, Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
  • Ammer C Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zones, Forest Sciences, University of Göttingen, Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
  • 2018-08-11
Published in:
  • Accident; analysis and prevention. - 2018
Animal–vehicle collisions
Deer mirrors
Deer–vehicle collisions
Roadside reflectors
Wildlife mirrors
Accidents, Traffic
Animals
Animals, Wild
Cross-Over Studies
Equivalence Trials as Topic
Humans
Location Directories and Signs
Prospective Studies
English Wildlife-vehicle collisions cause human fatalities and enormous economic and ecological losses on roads worldwide. A variety of mitigation measures have been developed over the past decades to separate traffic and wildlife, warn humans, or prevent wildlife from entering a road while vehicles are passing by, but only few are economical enough to be applied comprehensively. One such measure, wildlife warning reflectors, has been implemented over the past five decades. However, their efficacy is questioned because of contradictory study results and the variety of applied study designs and reflector models. We used a prospective, randomized non-superiority cross-over study design to test our hypothesis of the inefficacy of modern wildlife warning reflectors. We analyzed wildlife-vehicle collisions on 151 testing sites of approximately 2 km in length each. During the 24-month study period, 1984 wildlife-vehicle collisions were recorded. Confirmatory primary and exploratory secondary analyses using a log-link Poisson mixed model with normal nested random intercepts of observation year in road segment, involved species, and variables of the road segment and the surrounding environment showed that reflectors did not lower the number of wildlife-vehicle collisions by a relevant amount. In addition, variables of the road segment and the surrounding environment did not indicate differential effects of wildlife warning reflectors. Based on our results, we conclude that wildlife warning reflectors are not an effective tool for mitigating wildlife-vehicle collisions on roads.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/258359
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