Deer Collisions has created a free app for smartphones to help monitor deer-related road traffic accidents.
With deer involved in an estimated 42,000 road accidents each year on UK roads, Deer Collisions intends to use the app to catalogue deer fatalities and injuries. The Deer Initiative oversees the Deer Collisions research project, and the Highways Agency, Deer Commission for Scotland and the Woodland Trust help fund the study. Called OhDeer!, the app will enable users to log deer collisions on roads. By building up a database of this information, it is hoped that the number and locations of high-risk stretches of road will be identified.
Contributing information via the app will provide more accurate GPS data, making it easier to dispatch deer on the roadside afterwards. If the deer is hit when the phone has no signal, GPS information can still be recorded in the phone. This can then be uploaded once the user can access their phone network and the app.
Leave a Reply