MONCTON, (June 7, 2004) — New Brunswick police are warning truckers and motorists to keep an eye out for wildlife on provincial highways as moose collision season begins.

Even behind the wheel of larger vehicles like SUVs, and even trucks, drivers aren’t completely safe. “I’ve been at an accident where a tractor trailer was completely demolished and the moose wasn’t dead,” RCMP Sgt. Gary Cameron told the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal. At 450 kg., a moose can be as much as two meters tall, he says.

Provincial officials are urging drivers to slow down at night, pay attention to signage noting high-risk areas, scan both sides of the road as far ahead as possible, keep their windshields clean and headlights well adjusted and their high beams on whenever reasonable to do so.

In New Brunswick, collisions with moose claim the lives of drivers and passengers almost every year, with an annual average of 250 accidents — most of which accidents occur during the summer months, from now through to October.

In Western Canadian oil fields, the single biggest cause of personal injury is vehicle accidents, and animal strikes account for one third of all of those accidents. That’s why last year the Petroleum Technologies Association of Canada (PTAC) hired Veridian Technologies of Ann Arbor, Mich., to investigate high-tech solutions to animal strikes.

“This wildlife striking thing is only going to get worse,” says Shell Canada’s Grant Schwartzenberger, who gives technical support to PTAC. “There’s more gun control, a lot of ethnic groups don’t hunt, single moms don’t teach their boys to hunt.” Add urban growth to the mix, blend in a serious blackfly season and a severe winter, and you end up with even more moose and deer wandering into your headlights.

What’s a fleet owner or manager to do? Barry Davy, vice-president of field support services for Trimac Transportation in Calgary, that 57 animal strikes in Wyoming were reported by his drivers in one year alone. “In the old days, we had ultrasonic animal alerts but the things filled with slush and crap,” he tells Today’s Trucking. “Now we’re experimenting with Bendix Xvision.”

Bendix Xvision is a heat-sensitive camera that lets drivers “see” images five times farther away than the naked eye. Heat — from a body or a car — shows white on an in-cab display, typically mounted just below the driver’s line of vision. Or it can be a heads-up display, on the windshield.

Another high-tech option is the Eaton Vorad Collision Warning System, which uses radar to scan the terrain ahead of and beside a truck to warn drivers of unusual surfaces or potential objects. One of the criticisms of the system is that drivers may tune out persistent warnings when they’re in traffic. So it may be more effective on a rural or remote highway, where false alarms are less likely.

While Xvision and Vorad alert drivers about obstacles in their path, other devices are designed to keep animals off the highway altogether. One is the Shu Roo, distributed by a company of the same name in Van Nuys, Calif. Invented by an Australian after a few too many close encounters with kangaroos, Shu Roo emits a pulsing, high-frequency sound from two speakers mounted to your front bumper. The claim: it causes animals and birds to scatter for a quarter-mile ahead and 160 feet on either side of the truck.

But the best solution of all, says Reimer Express safety director Ken Shostak, is a set of strong, well-adjusted driving lights and the sense to know that if you see a roadside reflector winking off and on, it’s probably not a reflector at all. “I can think of four guys who have amassed millions of miles of accident-free driving,” he says. “It’s those kinds of guys who suggest to me that it’s not luck that keeps you from hitting animals. It’s good driving.”

— with files from the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal