Rise in vehicles hitting animals on roads; activists demand action

Every day, rescuer Sai Vignesh, gets close to four accident rescue calls. “Most of the accidents happen during the night, due to rash driving, where dogs, cats, goats and cows are hit by speeding vehicles. Around 90 per cent of the animals do not survive, while the ones who live often suffer severe spinal injury, causing permanent disability. Two months ago, I rescued a calf run over by a motorcycle.

Despite receiving treatment for close to a month, the animal did not survive,” said the rescuer, who is planning awareness campaigns in schools and also on social media.

Activist and rescuer Shravan Krishnan pointed out that road kill cases are on the rise. “There are more vehicles on the road, causing more accidents. There is always a steady stream of hit-and-run cases. But there is also a section of people, who run over animals purposefully. On Saturday, we picked up a dog -- someone had run over the its hindlegs.

When we stopped the person who had done it, the response we got was that if a dog is on the road, they will run over it.

Thankfully, this kind of people form only a small percentage,” said Shravan.

Reflective collars, introduced by Dinesh Baba, another activist, had focussed on putting glow-in-the-dark collars for street dogs, to save them from accidents.

Vignesh said that for this to work, every person has to ensure that their street dogs have reflective collars.

Shravan added, “Reflective collars are immensely helpful.

In many areas, people have even used it for cattle.

If it is a dog one is familiar with, reflective collars are a great idea to ensure their safety. But for the dogs who are unfamiliar, they hate the foreign object and try to tear it off.” It is not only the animals but also wildlife, that has been affected by increasing vehicles on the road. “Not only in the cities but on the highways, especially those abutting the national parks and forest areas, there have been many wild animals which have been runover by vehicles.

We need specific action taken to ensure that these animals are not at threat by increasing vehicles on the road,” said Shravan.