Conflicted about this - food insecurity is a real thing. However it may offend some people's sensibilities, there are many people that have a significant reliance on roadkill to fulfill their dietary needs. It can make the difference between going to bed well-fed, or going to bed with a deep hunger in the pit of one's stomach.
> there are many people that have a significant reliance on roadkill to fulfill their dietary needs.
I doubt that many people are collecting roadkill on a 75mph 6-lane divided freeway though, since I can't really think of any safe way to collect it.
But even if you could collect it, hitting anything small at that speed will completely pulverize it, and hitting anything larger will seriously hurt the vehicle's occupants, so it's probably best to stick to smaller roads.
Always has to be at least one commenter, "but what about my highly specific scenario? All the other people benefiting are an aberration to my specific need or wild singular example"
Fund SNAP, not discount game meat through the deaths of others.
SNAP is funded. Food pantries are abundant. Nobody is eating roadkill to survive as a matter of necessity. If you’re eating carrion that’s probably a lifestyle choice and indicative of some mental illness.
A wildlife overpass is certainly not going to be cheap, but I could see the road user safety benefit penciling out over the life of the asset. I wonder why you would send the animals over (and span the whole roadway) rather than under (cut and cover a box culvert). Either way, it would be nice to see this better funded for rural America.
Ignoring my incredulity at this response, the risk to the lives of the drivers seems to me to be of greater importance than the potential that some people might benefit from the carcasses lying on the side of road.
Instead of doing that boring thing the unthinking do - I challenge you to ask why 15M seems like a lot.
Is it a lot in comparrison to the costs to the taxpayers for all the emergency crews responding to animal caused accidents over the lifetime of the crossing, not to mention dealing with carcasses of animals, etc?
How much of any single person's tax money went into it? How long until those few cents get paid off in terms of saved time and gas by not dealing with the traffic backup from those accidents? How much do those few cents amortize to your savings in reduced insurance since thats less potential accident you have to bet against... how much savings does that reduction confer on your expected direct costs in cas you had been in a the accident?
Does 15M still seem like a lot?
Maybe you think it could be built cheaper - how? Show your work.
All these things sure are an interesting conversation to have. Much more interesting than "hur dur, 15M is a big number" anyway.
That seems well within reason, an article said about 1 deer collision prevented per day in the spring and fall high season. Having driven through the area and seen dashcam footage of collisions and near collisions, that $7k makes sense to me.
I've known several people that have hit deer on the highways here, and I'm actually surprised if anything that the number is that low.
So my gut feeling is that it actually has slightly better returns than expected from those numbers.
Cost plus have been disfavored in the FAR for a long time. That doesn't stop contract officers from writing them. The biggest thing, imo, is that congress needs to improve its oversight of ACAT I and ACAT II programs and stop waiting for them to be a hundred million overrun before yanking them.
The ROI is beyond solid. It's actually insane this wasn't done sooner at this location. A normal ROI for a wildlife crossing is 15 years. Here, it's two to three years.
> Cost savings: Each prevented wildlife–vehicle collision can save thousands of dollars—more than $19,000 per deer crash, $73,000 per elk, and $110,000 per moose—in vehicle, injury, and wildlife costs, making well-placed crossings a strong investment [0]
This section of highway had one deer-vehicle collision per day.
I know cost-effectivness is often the deciding factor, but that's kinda sad, so:
One deer hit a day, down 91% means ~330 deers saved per year.
$15m spread over the working population (160m) of the US is less than $0.10 per person.
So you're spending $0.10 to save 330 deer, which is a trade I would make.
You have to realize that it isn't just about saving deer. If you hit a deer at speed, it is going to do massive damage to your vehicle and potentially cause significant injury to the passengers, up to and including death. Overt fatalities are reportedly rare, like 0.1% or something, but the injury rate is closer to 5%.
This has been stuck in my head ever since I wrote about the rebrand. My final proposal: "car-saver" or "car-saver overpass."
"Today, our State Department of Transportation completed their latest car-saver overpass. This one will prevent more than 300 highway-speed collisions per year, saving drivers a lot of money, pain, and heartache."
Something like this only costs $15m because the incentives are crap. You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around. You have to pay just as much for a person to stand around as you do for them to be doing useful work.
Fixing the incentives is not easy at all. There are a lot of "good reasons" why this happens. Many of them are failures down the line, but no one at the contractor level pays the price for not mitigating them, so they don't. If a truck doesn't arrive on time, you could find something else useful to do, or you could just stand around waiting. If you/your company is paid by the hour, it's more profitable to stand there.
Your company could also charge the trucking company for arriving late, or the concrete plant for making them wait. This is not customary in the industry though.
Suppose you fixed all of this though. For a given number of construction projects, you'd need way less labor. If profits are a percentage of costs, less labor means less profit. Making things more efficient means the construction company has to lay a bunch of people off and make less profit, so their incentive is to convince the government that inflated costs are reasonable.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Laying people off is painful. However, one thing you might do would be to do more work for the same money, or higher quality work for the same money.
"…90% of the people at any given time are standing around."
Someone needs to write "Road Crew Simulator"—a game where you get to boss workers around and keep them busy rolling out asphalt, stacking traffic cones, etc. I had thought I knew of just one guaranteed customer for the game (my wife) but perhaps there are two!
> You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around.
If 90% of the people onsite are unnecessary, a competitor will simply bid for the project without the extra labor and win.
Have you considered the possibility that you don’t understand how road construction works? I don’t understand how it works and I am a commercial construction professional.
I'm curious about the POV you're coming from. I don't think the number of deer who don't get hit is relevant to the math on injury prevention, traffic prevention, and ongoing operational and property damage costs.
its to gauge the true need to build an overpass in the first place... like imagine the extreme case of a 50% hit rate. In that case building an overpass is completely unjustified, since after the second day the problem is gone
I've seen it and a few others on recent road trips.
Additionally, Colorado (and other states) are putting these "animal escape ramps" along the sides of highways.
From what I can gather, a fence runs along the freeway on both sides—presumably to keep the wildlife out. But, I suppose in case an animal makes it into the danger zone, every mile or so there are dirt berms built against the fence that provide a way up and over the fence. Presumably they drop off on the other side so an animal is not as likely to use these in reverse: to get into the danger zone.
Additionally, there are often small partitions at each berm, jutting out from the fence. I imagine an animal following along the fence—when they arrive at the partition, they either go around it and continue, or do the right thing: climb the berm to get to the other side of the fence.
53 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 22.9 ms ] threadI doubt that many people are collecting roadkill on a 75mph 6-lane divided freeway though, since I can't really think of any safe way to collect it.
But even if you could collect it, hitting anything small at that speed will completely pulverize it, and hitting anything larger will seriously hurt the vehicle's occupants, so it's probably best to stick to smaller roads.
Always has to be at least one commenter, "but what about my highly specific scenario? All the other people benefiting are an aberration to my specific need or wild singular example"
Fund SNAP, not discount game meat through the deaths of others.
This is not some country road!
A wildlife overpass is certainly not going to be cheap, but I could see the road user safety benefit penciling out over the life of the asset. I wonder why you would send the animals over (and span the whole roadway) rather than under (cut and cover a box culvert). Either way, it would be nice to see this better funded for rural America.
On a related note, they don’t send them under because most wild animals do not like enclosed tunnels and would not use them.
Like it or not, cars and hunters are the primary means of deer population control since adults lack significant natural predators.
The wildlife overpass is not primarily to save the lives of the deer. It's to save the lives of car drivers.
Disregarding the weird roadkill thing: That's a facile measure, 100% of $5 that nobody is eligible to receive is "funded".
In 2025 Republicans slashed its budget by the biggest cut in history, and today participation is the lowest in 17 years.
I doubt any of us honestly believe the drop is because everybody's financial situation has gotten way better.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker-p...
Wrong.
Especially in places that culturally frown upon wasted food / meat.
Like, maybe I can just buy you a cheeseburger instead of totalling my car
Reducing car/animal collisions is a good thing for cars(drivers) and animals.
The $15M price tag still seems like a lot. Happy for the critters and motorists tho
Is it a lot in comparrison to the costs to the taxpayers for all the emergency crews responding to animal caused accidents over the lifetime of the crossing, not to mention dealing with carcasses of animals, etc?
How much of any single person's tax money went into it? How long until those few cents get paid off in terms of saved time and gas by not dealing with the traffic backup from those accidents? How much do those few cents amortize to your savings in reduced insurance since thats less potential accident you have to bet against... how much savings does that reduction confer on your expected direct costs in cas you had been in a the accident?
Does 15M still seem like a lot?
Maybe you think it could be built cheaper - how? Show your work.
All these things sure are an interesting conversation to have. Much more interesting than "hur dur, 15M is a big number" anyway.
Some quick searching gives a claimed collision costs to everybody of ~$7k per event.
Supposing it's $15m and that it'd lasts 30 years, then it just needs to stop ~71 events per year to "pay for itself".
'Course, that's the cost of collisions rather than any near-misses or other problems.
So my gut feeling is that it actually has slightly better returns than expected from those numbers.
God we're terrible at building things.
> Cost savings: Each prevented wildlife–vehicle collision can save thousands of dollars—more than $19,000 per deer crash, $73,000 per elk, and $110,000 per moose—in vehicle, injury, and wildlife costs, making well-placed crossings a strong investment [0]
This section of highway had one deer-vehicle collision per day.
365 * $19,000 = $6,935,000 per year.
[0] https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/202...
That sounds like an extreme outlier.
"Today, our State Department of Transportation completed their latest car-saver overpass. This one will prevent more than 300 highway-speed collisions per year, saving drivers a lot of money, pain, and heartache."
Fixing the incentives is not easy at all. There are a lot of "good reasons" why this happens. Many of them are failures down the line, but no one at the contractor level pays the price for not mitigating them, so they don't. If a truck doesn't arrive on time, you could find something else useful to do, or you could just stand around waiting. If you/your company is paid by the hour, it's more profitable to stand there.
Your company could also charge the trucking company for arriving late, or the concrete plant for making them wait. This is not customary in the industry though.
Suppose you fixed all of this though. For a given number of construction projects, you'd need way less labor. If profits are a percentage of costs, less labor means less profit. Making things more efficient means the construction company has to lay a bunch of people off and make less profit, so their incentive is to convince the government that inflated costs are reasonable.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Laying people off is painful. However, one thing you might do would be to do more work for the same money, or higher quality work for the same money.
Someone needs to write "Road Crew Simulator"—a game where you get to boss workers around and keep them busy rolling out asphalt, stacking traffic cones, etc. I had thought I knew of just one guaranteed customer for the game (my wife) but perhaps there are two!
If 90% of the people onsite are unnecessary, a competitor will simply bid for the project without the extra labor and win.
Have you considered the possibility that you don’t understand how road construction works? I don’t understand how it works and I am a commercial construction professional.
Relative to how many didn't get hit, what's the percentage there?
Additionally, Colorado (and other states) are putting these "animal escape ramps" along the sides of highways.
From what I can gather, a fence runs along the freeway on both sides—presumably to keep the wildlife out. But, I suppose in case an animal makes it into the danger zone, every mile or so there are dirt berms built against the fence that provide a way up and over the fence. Presumably they drop off on the other side so an animal is not as likely to use these in reverse: to get into the danger zone.
Additionally, there are often small partitions at each berm, jutting out from the fence. I imagine an animal following along the fence—when they arrive at the partition, they either go around it and continue, or do the right thing: climb the berm to get to the other side of the fence.
(Apparently called "Jump Outs": https://www.dot.state.wy.us/home/news_info/district_news_inf...)