4 ms·

It used to be—80s and early 90s—that a couple hundred mile drive down the Oregon coast would need at least one or two stops for bug splat removal. I made that d

by Wistar 4y ago

It used to be—80s and early 90s—that a couple hundred mile drive down the Oregon coast would need at least one or two stops for bug splat removal. I made that drive last July and there were perhaps two splats for the entire 400-mile round trip.

moron4hire 4y ago
I remember being at minor league baseball games in the 90s, waiting for dark to see fireworks after the game, and getting absolutely rained on by moths falling from getting cooked in the stadium lights. The cloud of moths would be so thick it would partially obscure the lights. The girls would scream and the boys would scoop up handfuls from the ground to throw at the girls. ... Not me. Other boys. Anyway. I don't think the mosquitoes got the memo. I feel like I get more and more bites every year.
dvh 4y ago
'80s cars are not exactly known for their aerodynamics... _____ ___/__|__\__ [ \__|__/ ] '( )------( )=
- Wistar 4y ago
  Last summer's trip was in a Mercedes GLK, not exactly the paragon of slipperiness.
- Steltek 4y ago
  The majority of US cars are huge SUVs and pickup trucks. I would dare say 80's cars are more aerodynamic simply by having a smaller cross section.
  - drewzero1 4y ago
    Not necessarily. Windshields were less curved and more vertical, body panels were much less contoured, and features like sealed-beam headlights, mirrors (if equipped), and windshield wipers were more protuberant. A 1980s Mercury Grand Marquis had a drag coefficient of 0.46, while a 2018 Ram 1500 is listed at 0.357 (less is better). Obviously some 80s cars fared better, mostly compacts like my '83 SAAB 900 (3.7, not on the list below) or sports cars. I just picked the Mercury as a typical full-sized family sedan. Here's a big list, for anyone interested in some numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient
    - wtallis 4y ago
      Coefficient of drag normalizes relative to cross sectional area. Pointing out that a modern Ram 1500 has a lower Cd than an old Mercury doesn't mean the Ram has less drag. If the Ram's cross sectional area is 30% larger, it will have more drag than the Mercury despite having a more aerodynamic shape.
      - drewzero1 4y ago
        Thanks for pointing this out; I was unaware. There's also a table of cross-sections later in the linked Wikipedia page, but I hadn't paid much attention to it because of not knowing how to perform a meaningful comparison.
      - Wistar 4y ago
        I have heard that a Spoon Sports modified F20c can do 11k reliably. The engine has a very long stroke for its size, and stock, the piston speeds are already higher than almost any other car engine, so that it can spin as fast as it does is pretty amazing. Motorcycle engines, however… Some of those are 14-16K stock.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- PheonixPharts 4y ago
  This is the classic "this is fine" response whenever someone posts this observation about declining insect populations and cleaning dead bugs off of cars. However a tiny bit of investigation into this will lead you to realize that this hypothesis is false. More than just being false, research has discovered that modern cars hit more insects than less aerodynamic cars [0]: > The research included vintage cars up to 70 years old to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit slightly more insects. So, given what research has shown us, we should expect there to be more insects observed if it were the case that insect populations remained stable while cars became more aerodynamic. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-spla...
  - gonzo 4y ago
    Not if the aerodynamic cars from a decade ago significantly impacted insect populations.
    - Kaibeezy 4y ago
      Less than half of 1% of the land area in the United States is covered by roads of all kinds, not including rights-of-way, parking lots, and driveways. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Paved Roads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11535 https://doi.org/10.17226/11535.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        There is every reason to expect that the flying insects near paved roads today are less likely to die in encounters with cars than the flying insects near roads of 40 years ago. But it would be very difficult to measure that effect.
  - jgraham 4y ago
    Right, the quote from the linked paper is: > This is contrary to a suggestion that finding fewer insects on number plates in recent years might be attributed to increasing streamlining of vehicle aerodynamics over time. Our data show that newer vehicles sample more insects than older vehicles, and we have observed pattern of fewer insects on number plates more recently than in the past in spite of this effect of vehicle age, which is assumed to be correlated with aerodynamics. In fact the researchers posit a few more possiblities other than collapse of insect populations that could explain their data. For example they can't eliminate the possibility that there's some change in the management of roadside verges that specifically decreases the insect population in those environments, without reducing the population in other environments. The challenge for all the explainations which involve something other than population change is that there's now an increasing nubmer of studies using different techniques which consistently show declining populations. For example [1] uses Malaise traps in nature reserves, which presumably wouldn't be affected by roadside management practices, and finds a ~75% decrese in flying insect biomass over 27 years, whereas [2] uses light trap data to look at moths specifically and finds a ~40% decline in biomass over 50 years (and ~50% in woodlands). Whilst it's possible to find studies that show increases in insect numbers e.g. as a result of site-specific conservation work, there's a lot of data suggesting that in Europe at least numbers are in significant decline. As far as I can tell (and I'm really not an expert) we don't understand the reasons all that well, but habitat fragmentation and pesticide use are leading theories. We at least know that common pesticides (notably, but not exclusively, neonicotinoids) are toxic to bees, and will reduce populations even at sub-lethal doses (e.g. [3]). So changing our agricultral practices to eliminate these chemicals looks like a necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, part of the solution. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad.12578 https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad... [3] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.665.9882&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66...
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  Somewhat off topic - Did you draw that car yourself, or did you copy it from somewhere? It's great!
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    This happens on my home Debian box when I mistype `git`: $ gti ,---------------. / /``````|``````\\ / /_______|_______\\________ |] GTI |' | |] = .-:-. |________| .-:-. = ` -+- -------------- -+- ' '-:-' '-:-'
- zevv 4y ago
  I have been driving the exact car from this drawing for the last 25 years: Volvo 940, square as a brick. In the 90s, it needed a weekly scrub to keep the headlights and plate visible. I have literally not washed my car a single time over the last year. It has moss and pollen all over, but there are hardly any bug splats. This frightens me _so_ very much.
- narag 4y ago
  There's this assumption, not explicit, but floating around this thread, that aerodynamics somehow makes splats more difficult. I can't really refute it, but it doesn't ring true to me either. Insects don't even touch the car before exploding, mind you.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  The article's title specifically mentions "number plates". All cars in the UK are required to display number plates (license plates) at the front and back. They have a standard size. They are nearly all (99% or more) in the centre and are roughly the same height off the ground, depending on model. My first Mark 1 Ford Fiesta from 198something had its plate at about the same place as the Honda S2000 I had in 200something and the Renault CLio I have now and the Ford Transit van I also drive. The S2000 did the best doughnuts though. Rear wheel drive, variable valves, 13,500 RPM red line and quite a lot of welly.
  - eptcyka 4y ago
    What kind of mods did you put on your S2000 for it to do 13500 RPM and not blow up immediately? That redline would be 3000 above any other production car sold, with the 2nd place being a motorcycle engine in an Ariel Atom 500 redlining at 10'500 RPM.
    - gerdesj 4y ago
      My eyes are dim, my memory is ... Whoops. Perhaps 9000 RPM is a bit closer to when the bloody thing stuttered when I overdid it a bit. It got there rather rapidly in 1st and getting into 2nd and 3rd on time took a bit of fast twiddling. No paddle flapping nonsense, just a stick that has to be moved rather fast in conjunction with the clutch. I live in Yeovil, Somerset - the Ariel mob are from down the road - Crewkerne (pronounced something like Kruken!)
    - Wistar 4y ago
      I have heard that a Spoon Sports modified F20c can do 11k reliably. The engine has a very long stroke for its size, and stock, the piston speeds are already higher than almost any other car engine, so that it can spin as fast as it does is pretty amazing. Motorcycle engines, however… Some of those are 14-16K stock.
  - Reubachi 4y ago
    Your s2000 had a 13.5k redline? Did you happen to have one with a Spoon engine that went 2k beyond any other Spoon engine? Not doubting you just genuinely interested as an enthusiast. edit: saw your other reply
brimble 4y ago
This was the case in the Midwest in our basically-the-same-shape-as-modern-cars 90s family cars. We'd use the windshield cleaner thing next to the gas pump nearly every time we stopped, when on road trips, and for good reason—there'd be a few large splatters and a bunch of smaller ones, every time. And that's if it wasn't particularly buggy out that day—there were some times we stopped for the windshield, not for gas. I think I've done that like... four or five times, total, since the year 2000. And I think every time it was for a single big bug-splatter. [EDIT] I also recall there being tens of times more large insects—butterflies, large moths, grasshoppers, katydids—around in general back in the late 80s and early 90s, even in the 'burbs, like they were just all over the place in the Spring and Summer, you'd walk through lawn-length grass at the school playground and tons of them would be all around you, hopping away or taking to the air, and now I have to try pretty hard to find even one... but surely that can't be right, can it? That'd be super noticeable by scientists who track that kind of thing. Right?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I’ve been driving all over the midwest and my car is covered in splats after each trip. This seems really surprising to me.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    I’ve driven a lot over Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in rural areas since the 60’s. The number of bug splats now is just a fraction of what it was in the 60’s and 70’s.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      I don’t doubt that; I was just remarking about the “1 splat” figure.
- choeger 4y ago
  There might be a perception thing involved as well. Insects tend to emit sound in high frequencies and adults get worse in hearing those as they age. When I was in my early 20s, my mother once swore there were no crickets around while I was like "how can you not hear them? They're so loud...". Nowadays, I wonder were the crickets have gone...

by Wistar 4y ago

moron4hire 4y ago

I remember being at minor league baseball games in the 90s, waiting for dark to see fireworks after the game, and getting absolutely rained on by moths falling from getting cooked in the stadium lights. The cloud of moths would be so thick it would partially obscure the lights. The girls would scream and the boys would scoop up handfuls from the ground to throw at the girls. ... Not me. Other boys. Anyway. I don't think the mosquitoes got the memo. I feel like I get more and more bites every year.

dvh 4y ago

'80s cars are not exactly known for their aerodynamics... _____ ___/__|__\__ [ \__|__/ ] '( )------( )=

Wistar 4y ago
Last summer's trip was in a Mercedes GLK, not exactly the paragon of slipperiness.
Steltek 4y ago
The majority of US cars are huge SUVs and pickup trucks. I would dare say 80's cars are more aerodynamic simply by having a smaller cross section.
- drewzero1 4y ago
  Not necessarily. Windshields were less curved and more vertical, body panels were much less contoured, and features like sealed-beam headlights, mirrors (if equipped), and windshield wipers were more protuberant. A 1980s Mercury Grand Marquis had a drag coefficient of 0.46, while a 2018 Ram 1500 is listed at 0.357 (less is better). Obviously some 80s cars fared better, mostly compacts like my '83 SAAB 900 (3.7, not on the list below) or sports cars. I just picked the Mercury as a typical full-sized family sedan. Here's a big list, for anyone interested in some numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient
  - wtallis 4y ago
    Coefficient of drag normalizes relative to cross sectional area. Pointing out that a modern Ram 1500 has a lower Cd than an old Mercury doesn't mean the Ram has less drag. If the Ram's cross sectional area is 30% larger, it will have more drag than the Mercury despite having a more aerodynamic shape.
    - drewzero1 4y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out; I was unaware. There's also a table of cross-sections later in the linked Wikipedia page, but I hadn't paid much attention to it because of not knowing how to perform a meaningful comparison.
    - Wistar 4y ago
      I have heard that a Spoon Sports modified F20c can do 11k reliably. The engine has a very long stroke for its size, and stock, the piston speeds are already higher than almost any other car engine, so that it can spin as fast as it does is pretty amazing. Motorcycle engines, however… Some of those are 14-16K stock.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
PheonixPharts 4y ago
This is the classic "this is fine" response whenever someone posts this observation about declining insect populations and cleaning dead bugs off of cars. However a tiny bit of investigation into this will lead you to realize that this hypothesis is false. More than just being false, research has discovered that modern cars hit more insects than less aerodynamic cars [0]: > The research included vintage cars up to 70 years old to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit slightly more insects. So, given what research has shown us, we should expect there to be more insects observed if it were the case that insect populations remained stable while cars became more aerodynamic. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-spla...
- gonzo 4y ago
  Not if the aerodynamic cars from a decade ago significantly impacted insect populations.
  - Kaibeezy 4y ago
    Less than half of 1% of the land area in the United States is covered by roads of all kinds, not including rights-of-way, parking lots, and driveways. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2005. Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Paved Roads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11535 https://doi.org/10.17226/11535.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      There is every reason to expect that the flying insects near paved roads today are less likely to die in encounters with cars than the flying insects near roads of 40 years ago. But it would be very difficult to measure that effect.
- jgraham 4y ago
  Right, the quote from the linked paper is: > This is contrary to a suggestion that finding fewer insects on number plates in recent years might be attributed to increasing streamlining of vehicle aerodynamics over time. Our data show that newer vehicles sample more insects than older vehicles, and we have observed pattern of fewer insects on number plates more recently than in the past in spite of this effect of vehicle age, which is assumed to be correlated with aerodynamics. In fact the researchers posit a few more possiblities other than collapse of insect populations that could explain their data. For example they can't eliminate the possibility that there's some change in the management of roadside verges that specifically decreases the insect population in those environments, without reducing the population in other environments. The challenge for all the explainations which involve something other than population change is that there's now an increasing nubmer of studies using different techniques which consistently show declining populations. For example [1] uses Malaise traps in nature reserves, which presumably wouldn't be affected by roadside management practices, and finds a ~75% decrese in flying insect biomass over 27 years, whereas [2] uses light trap data to look at moths specifically and finds a ~40% decline in biomass over 50 years (and ~50% in woodlands). Whilst it's possible to find studies that show increases in insect numbers e.g. as a result of site-specific conservation work, there's a lot of data suggesting that in Europe at least numbers are in significant decline. As far as I can tell (and I'm really not an expert) we don't understand the reasons all that well, but habitat fragmentation and pesticide use are leading theories. We at least know that common pesticides (notably, but not exclusively, neonicotinoids) are toxic to bees, and will reduce populations even at sub-lethal doses (e.g. [3]). So changing our agricultral practices to eliminate these chemicals looks like a necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, part of the solution. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad.12578 https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad... [3] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.665.9882&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66...
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
Somewhat off topic - Did you draw that car yourself, or did you copy it from somewhere? It's great!
- dotancohen 4y ago
  This happens on my home Debian box when I mistype `git`: $ gti ,---------------. / /``````|``````\\ / /_______|_______\\________ |] GTI |' | |] = .-:-. |________| .-:-. = ` -+- -------------- -+- ' '-:-' '-:-'
zevv 4y ago
I have been driving the exact car from this drawing for the last 25 years: Volvo 940, square as a brick. In the 90s, it needed a weekly scrub to keep the headlights and plate visible. I have literally not washed my car a single time over the last year. It has moss and pollen all over, but there are hardly any bug splats. This frightens me _so_ very much.
narag 4y ago
There's this assumption, not explicit, but floating around this thread, that aerodynamics somehow makes splats more difficult. I can't really refute it, but it doesn't ring true to me either. Insects don't even touch the car before exploding, mind you.
gerdesj 4y ago
The article's title specifically mentions "number plates". All cars in the UK are required to display number plates (license plates) at the front and back. They have a standard size. They are nearly all (99% or more) in the centre and are roughly the same height off the ground, depending on model. My first Mark 1 Ford Fiesta from 198something had its plate at about the same place as the Honda S2000 I had in 200something and the Renault CLio I have now and the Ford Transit van I also drive. The S2000 did the best doughnuts though. Rear wheel drive, variable valves, 13,500 RPM red line and quite a lot of welly.
- eptcyka 4y ago
  What kind of mods did you put on your S2000 for it to do 13500 RPM and not blow up immediately? That redline would be 3000 above any other production car sold, with the 2nd place being a motorcycle engine in an Ariel Atom 500 redlining at 10'500 RPM.
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    My eyes are dim, my memory is ... Whoops. Perhaps 9000 RPM is a bit closer to when the bloody thing stuttered when I overdid it a bit. It got there rather rapidly in 1st and getting into 2nd and 3rd on time took a bit of fast twiddling. No paddle flapping nonsense, just a stick that has to be moved rather fast in conjunction with the clutch. I live in Yeovil, Somerset - the Ariel mob are from down the road - Crewkerne (pronounced something like Kruken!)
  - Wistar 4y ago
    I have heard that a Spoon Sports modified F20c can do 11k reliably. The engine has a very long stroke for its size, and stock, the piston speeds are already higher than almost any other car engine, so that it can spin as fast as it does is pretty amazing. Motorcycle engines, however… Some of those are 14-16K stock.
- Reubachi 4y ago
  Your s2000 had a 13.5k redline? Did you happen to have one with a Spoon engine that went 2k beyond any other Spoon engine? Not doubting you just genuinely interested as an enthusiast. edit: saw your other reply

brimble 4y ago

This was the case in the Midwest in our basically-the-same-shape-as-modern-cars 90s family cars. We'd use the windshield cleaner thing next to the gas pump nearly every time we stopped, when on road trips, and for good reason—there'd be a few large splatters and a bunch of smaller ones, every time. And that's if it wasn't particularly buggy out that day—there were some times we stopped for the windshield, not for gas. I think I've done that like... four or five times, total, since the year 2000. And I think every time it was for a single big bug-splatter. [EDIT] I also recall there being tens of times more large insects—butterflies, large moths, grasshoppers, katydids—around in general back in the late 80s and early 90s, even in the 'burbs, like they were just all over the place in the Spring and Summer, you'd walk through lawn-length grass at the school playground and tons of them would be all around you, hopping away or taking to the air, and now I have to try pretty hard to find even one... but surely that can't be right, can it? That'd be super noticeable by scientists who track that kind of thing. Right?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 4y ago
I’ve been driving all over the midwest and my car is covered in splats after each trip. This seems really surprising to me.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  I’ve driven a lot over Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in rural areas since the 60’s. The number of bug splats now is just a fraction of what it was in the 60’s and 70’s.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I don’t doubt that; I was just remarking about the “1 splat” figure.
choeger 4y ago
There might be a perception thing involved as well. Insects tend to emit sound in high frequencies and adults get worse in hearing those as they age. When I was in my early 20s, my mother once swore there were no crickets around while I was like "how can you not hear them? They're so loud...". Nowadays, I wonder were the crickets have gone...