Recipes from disaster: a novel approach to reduce road trauma arising from wildlife-vehicle collisions on Kangaroo Island, South Australia

Wildlife-vehicle collisions are a common occurrence on rural roads across Australia, with evidence suggesting injuries from unsuccessful wildlife avoidance manoeuvres (predominantly rollover) are more serious than those resulting from collision alone.

Kangaroo Island is the jewel in South Australia?s ecotourism crown, with 160,000 tourist visitors per annum. Unfortunately the juxtaposition of abundant native wildlife with drivers travelling at high speed over long distances on unsealed roads, often results in a significant burden of road-related trauma for the local medical service. This burden is not necessarily borne out by State road crash statistics, which do not always reliably record crash cause.