Road accidents that have been caused by wild animals wandering onto the nation's roads have doubled in the last ten years.
Last year, for example, there were 36,000, which works out about a hundred a day. Surprising, right? This figures represent around 30% of all road accidents.
The most common accidents are caused by wild-animal incidents (as opposed to domestic or farm animals) with 42% involving a wild boar and 32% involving a deer.
Un surprisingly, the majority of these accidents occur in España Despoblada (the areas of Spain where the inhabitant are dying off or moving away leaving virtually empty villages) and large rural areas, be they cultivated fields or uncultivated mountain land. So, we’re talking about Soria (despoblado), and large rural areas such as Galicia, Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha.
Whilst wild animal vs vehicles fights virtually always end in the demise of the former, the injury rate for humans is quite low, around 1.5% of accidents involving animals (eight people killed and 58 hospitalised). Oh, and the vehicles don’t come off very well, either.
To counter this problem (where most vehicles either suffer a frontal collision or swerve off the road after over reacting at the wheel) the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) has presented a guide, which you can view here.
The study that the Traffic Department carried out in order to compose this guide, concentrated on the roads where most of these accidents occur which they categorise as Tefiva (Tramos de especial frecuencia de incidentes viales con animales). These stretches of road have over the last five years suffered at least ten incidents involving animals of a certain size (sod-off boar, for example) which have resulted in injuries.
During 2023 a total of 150 stretches of road were identified as Tefiva with a total length between them of 205 kilometres.
Accordingly, the DGT has set up a pilot scheme to be incorporated into their DGT 3.0 programme. The idea is that this information is transmitted to drivers via sat-nav devices in real time when entering these areas.
(News: Spain)
Keywords: Road Accidents, Caused by Animals, Blackspots, DGT, Tefiva, Wild Boars, Deer
news, spain, road accidents, caused by animals, blackspots, dgt, tefiva, wild boars, deer