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I know I’m not the only one alarmed by the fact that we used to have to clean bug splats off our windshields weekly during the summer and now don’t. The downstr

I know I’m not the only one alarmed by the fact that we used to have to clean bug splats off our windshields weekly during the summer and now don’t. The downstream and parallel effects must be massive.

cluckindan 1y ago
Aren’t modern windshield coatings awesome?
- Hammershaft 1y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon The reduction in windshield bug splats has more to do with the decline in insect populations. EDIT: I originally said 75% decline over 30 years. Those are the results for studies in parts of Germany. We don't have solid data on global loss in insect populations.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    There's a degree to which aerodynamics play a role in the number of splats but the numbers are also definitely way down.
    - hadlock 1y ago
      We switched from a sedan with a very sloped windshield, to an SUV with a suprisingly upright windshield (one of the cartoonishly offroad mall crawlers). I've never had to scrape bugs off my windshield in my life before we bought the SUV but we go through a lot more windshield wiper fluid now than we did a couple months ago despite keeping the same driving patterns.
      - hinkley 1y ago
        Some of that design is about keeping pedestrians from going head-first through your windshield if you hit them. With the SUV the top of the hood is above the center of mass of the hypothetical pedestrian, whereas the sedan is below, and so they have to encourage the flying human to slide over the roof instead of go teeth first into your back seat. That it helps with bugs is more of a happy coincidence.
        red369 1y ago
        The worse case with the sedan, of going teeth first through the windshield and into the back seat, sounds a lot better than the SUV alternative for pedestrians! I know you're not making a comment either way regarding pedestrian safety with sedans/SUVs in your post, but there's something that caught my attention about the graphic description for the sedan, with just a hint hanging there that the SUV would be worse. Full disclosure: I'm biased against SUVs. Something about the sheer size seems wasteful. They also make more sense to be common in some places than others, and I haven't lived anywhere recently that I think they make sense.
        KennyBlanken 1y ago
        People do not go "teeth first through the windshield into the back seat" when hit by a sedan. They go up the hood and up the windshield. Euro-NCAP crash standards are specifically designed to "help" this by means of hoods which crumple and/or shift position in such a case. That is infinitely preferable to hitting the flat face of most American and Japanese SUVs and specially pickup trucks, which are designd primarily to look "aggressive" and "angry" because that's what pickup truck buyers want.
        hinkley 1y ago
        There are old vehicle designs were the grill causes the pedestrian to rotate 90° into the windshield. Your assertion of how collisions work is predicated on changes to hood and front design that already account for pedestrian collision physics. But you’re implying this has always been the case and it has not. This is, for instance, a big part of why the Mini Cooper is no longer mini. They had to lift the hood profile to reduce angular momentum. Also why the forward raked grill designs of the seventies are gone never to return. Those suck pedestrians under the car, which is almost always fatal.
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    Anecdotally I also feel like I’ve notice a decline in windshield splat. But wouldn’t we notice severe bird population declines as well?
    - seszett 1y ago
      But we do notice severe bird population decline: https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/agricultural-intensification-driving-decline-bird-populations-across-europe https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/agricultural-intensification-dr...
    - kreyenborgi 1y ago
      https://trends.ebird.org/ https://trends.ebird.org/ that's exactly what we do (and have been since we started poisoning with pesticides etc)
  - mc32 1y ago
    It’s also possible some insects have learned to avoid certain corridors at certain altitude to avoid getting splattered. Animals do adapt behavior to avoid new threats. Now, admittedly it’s just conjecture but I would not rule it out nor am I saying it would account for all windshield spat decline.
- animitronix 1y ago
  [flagged]
JLCarveth 1y ago
I still get a large amount of bugs on the front of my car, makes me wish I had applied PPF.
Hilift 1y ago
I saw lightning bugs and dragon flies for the first time in a long time this year. Our county banned pesticides for residential and recreation areas.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  I left a lot of the leaves on my lawn this year and only thinned out the spots where they were thick enough to kill the grass. Huge increase in lightning bugs this summer.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
    I reseeded my lawn with clover and saw a huge increase in all kinds of lightening bugs, bees, etc. Alos rabbits which surprised me (I'm in the middle of a dense urban area... there is a park nearby, though)
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      Nice! I forgot to mention that I also added microclover the the mix last fall. The bees love the little clover flowers.
    - skeezyboy 1y ago
      lawn grass massively harms the environment, as do topiaries
deadbabe 1y ago
This is actually due to evolution. Insect populations have evolved generation by generation such that the ones who avoid flying over roadways survive more often, and in time we end up with less bugs getting killed. Because the lifecycle of insects is very short, this can happen easily over the course of decades, enough to witness in one human lifetime.
- chrisgd 1y ago
  Seems hard to believe but I want to believe
- tired-turtle 1y ago
  While this claim is plausible, it’s (admittedly pleasing) conjecture until you provide evidence.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    I saw it myself, we did high speed off-roading and smashed a ton of bugs. But on the highway? Little to no bugs.
    - Xss3 1y ago
      That doesn't prove anything. Disturbing burrowing bugs or bugs in grass and bushes with rumbling and lights is easily enough to account for a vast difference alone...Then consider the environment was more wild with more habitat space for bugs compared to a road...
      - deadbabe 1y ago
        I think it casts a reasonable doubt on the simple theory that wide spread use of pesticide somehow killed off enough bugs that we no longer have them hitting our windshields. If bug populations were dwindling you wouldn’t encounter them in the wild this way. It’s more likely I think that most successful reproduction for the past century has increasingly been done by bugs who avoid flying over roads. There could be many reasons why they do this. Perhaps some sense the vast asphalt plain and prefer to stay in greener areas. Temperatures above roads in full sun are much hotter than above grass. Turbulence encountered by cars may encourage some bugs to seek calmer airspaces. It’s not so simple as “pesticides”.
packetlost 1y ago
I'd be willing to bet this has more to do with more aerodynamic designs of cars than less bugs in general.
- poncho_romero 1y ago
  I believe the same decrease is visible when driving older (less aerodynamic) cars, but I don’t have any studies on hand
  - Xss3 1y ago
    ...or just ask a bus driver, van driver, euro truck driver, etc. They've all seen the decline too.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
pamelafox 1y ago
Yep, that observation is discussed frequently in the book "Insect Crisis". Highly recommend!
phendrenad2 1y ago
This one is weird to me because lots of people claim that they don't get as many windshield bug splats as they used to, and I haven't noticed a difference. I kind of wonder if there's some form of mass misremembering a la the "mandela effect where people have splatted (heh) one or two memorable instances of a bug-covered windshield across their entire childhood's memory range. Yes, I know there are some "studies" about this, but I find their sampling size and methods basically inconsequential.

cluckindan 1y ago

Aren’t modern windshield coatings awesome?

Hammershaft 1y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon The reduction in windshield bug splats has more to do with the decline in insect populations. EDIT: I originally said 75% decline over 30 years. Those are the results for studies in parts of Germany. We don't have solid data on global loss in insect populations.
- hinkley 1y ago
  There's a degree to which aerodynamics play a role in the number of splats but the numbers are also definitely way down.
  - hadlock 1y ago
    We switched from a sedan with a very sloped windshield, to an SUV with a suprisingly upright windshield (one of the cartoonishly offroad mall crawlers). I've never had to scrape bugs off my windshield in my life before we bought the SUV but we go through a lot more windshield wiper fluid now than we did a couple months ago despite keeping the same driving patterns.
    - hinkley 1y ago
      Some of that design is about keeping pedestrians from going head-first through your windshield if you hit them. With the SUV the top of the hood is above the center of mass of the hypothetical pedestrian, whereas the sedan is below, and so they have to encourage the flying human to slide over the roof instead of go teeth first into your back seat. That it helps with bugs is more of a happy coincidence.
      - red369 1y ago
        The worse case with the sedan, of going teeth first through the windshield and into the back seat, sounds a lot better than the SUV alternative for pedestrians! I know you're not making a comment either way regarding pedestrian safety with sedans/SUVs in your post, but there's something that caught my attention about the graphic description for the sedan, with just a hint hanging there that the SUV would be worse. Full disclosure: I'm biased against SUVs. Something about the sheer size seems wasteful. They also make more sense to be common in some places than others, and I haven't lived anywhere recently that I think they make sense.
        KennyBlanken 1y ago
        People do not go "teeth first through the windshield into the back seat" when hit by a sedan. They go up the hood and up the windshield. Euro-NCAP crash standards are specifically designed to "help" this by means of hoods which crumple and/or shift position in such a case. That is infinitely preferable to hitting the flat face of most American and Japanese SUVs and specially pickup trucks, which are designd primarily to look "aggressive" and "angry" because that's what pickup truck buyers want.
        hinkley 1y ago
        There are old vehicle designs were the grill causes the pedestrian to rotate 90° into the windshield. Your assertion of how collisions work is predicated on changes to hood and front design that already account for pedestrian collision physics. But you’re implying this has always been the case and it has not. This is, for instance, a big part of why the Mini Cooper is no longer mini. They had to lift the hood profile to reduce angular momentum. Also why the forward raked grill designs of the seventies are gone never to return. Those suck pedestrians under the car, which is almost always fatal.
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  Anecdotally I also feel like I’ve notice a decline in windshield splat. But wouldn’t we notice severe bird population declines as well?
  - seszett 1y ago
    But we do notice severe bird population decline: https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/agricultural-intensification-driving-decline-bird-populations-across-europe https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/agricultural-intensification-dr...
  - kreyenborgi 1y ago
    https://trends.ebird.org/ https://trends.ebird.org/ that's exactly what we do (and have been since we started poisoning with pesticides etc)
- mc32 1y ago
  It’s also possible some insects have learned to avoid certain corridors at certain altitude to avoid getting splattered. Animals do adapt behavior to avoid new threats. Now, admittedly it’s just conjecture but I would not rule it out nor am I saying it would account for all windshield spat decline.
animitronix 1y ago
[flagged]

JLCarveth 1y ago

I still get a large amount of bugs on the front of my car, makes me wish I had applied PPF.

Hilift 1y ago

I saw lightning bugs and dragon flies for the first time in a long time this year. Our county banned pesticides for residential and recreation areas.

sarchertech 1y ago
I left a lot of the leaves on my lawn this year and only thinned out the spots where they were thick enough to kill the grass. Huge increase in lightning bugs this summer.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
  I reseeded my lawn with clover and saw a huge increase in all kinds of lightening bugs, bees, etc. Alos rabbits which surprised me (I'm in the middle of a dense urban area... there is a park nearby, though)
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    Nice! I forgot to mention that I also added microclover the the mix last fall. The bees love the little clover flowers.
  - skeezyboy 1y ago
    lawn grass massively harms the environment, as do topiaries

deadbabe 1y ago

This is actually due to evolution. Insect populations have evolved generation by generation such that the ones who avoid flying over roadways survive more often, and in time we end up with less bugs getting killed. Because the lifecycle of insects is very short, this can happen easily over the course of decades, enough to witness in one human lifetime.

chrisgd 1y ago
Seems hard to believe but I want to believe
tired-turtle 1y ago
While this claim is plausible, it’s (admittedly pleasing) conjecture until you provide evidence.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  I saw it myself, we did high speed off-roading and smashed a ton of bugs. But on the highway? Little to no bugs.
  - Xss3 1y ago
    That doesn't prove anything. Disturbing burrowing bugs or bugs in grass and bushes with rumbling and lights is easily enough to account for a vast difference alone...Then consider the environment was more wild with more habitat space for bugs compared to a road...
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      I think it casts a reasonable doubt on the simple theory that wide spread use of pesticide somehow killed off enough bugs that we no longer have them hitting our windshields. If bug populations were dwindling you wouldn’t encounter them in the wild this way. It’s more likely I think that most successful reproduction for the past century has increasingly been done by bugs who avoid flying over roads. There could be many reasons why they do this. Perhaps some sense the vast asphalt plain and prefer to stay in greener areas. Temperatures above roads in full sun are much hotter than above grass. Turbulence encountered by cars may encourage some bugs to seek calmer airspaces. It’s not so simple as “pesticides”.

packetlost 1y ago

I'd be willing to bet this has more to do with more aerodynamic designs of cars than less bugs in general.

poncho_romero 1y ago
I believe the same decrease is visible when driving older (less aerodynamic) cars, but I don’t have any studies on hand
- Xss3 1y ago
  ...or just ask a bus driver, van driver, euro truck driver, etc. They've all seen the decline too.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pamelafox 1y ago

Yep, that observation is discussed frequently in the book "Insect Crisis". Highly recommend!

phendrenad2 1y ago

This one is weird to me because lots of people claim that they don't get as many windshield bug splats as they used to, and I haven't noticed a difference. I kind of wonder if there's some form of mass misremembering a la the "mandela effect where people have splatted (heh) one or two memorable instances of a bug-covered windshield across their entire childhood's memory range. Yes, I know there are some "studies" about this, but I find their sampling size and methods basically inconsequential.