from the on-Comet-on-Cupid-on-Donner-and-Roadkill dept.
There's good news for Rudolph and his friends—an app is helping officials reduce the number of reindeer killed in traffic accidents in Finland. Some 300,000 reindeer freely wander the wilds of Lapland in Arctic Finland. An estimated 4,000 are killed every year through road accidents, officials say, and compensation to reindeer herders can be expensive.
[...] A simple, one-button interface allows drivers to tap their smartphone screens to register any reindeer spotted near roads. Using GPS technology, it creates a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) warning zone that lasts for an hour and warns other app users approaching the area. "If there are reindeer, (drivers) reduce speed," Ylinampa said. "When they have passed the warning place, then they can get back to the normal speed again."
Related Stories
Move Over, Goat Yoga. Alaskans Now Have Reindeer Yoga
If you want to incorporate quality time with animals into your yoga practice, you have a lot of options these days. There's puppy yoga, cat yoga, and perhaps the most famous — goat yoga.
Now, in Fairbanks, Alaska, there's a new offering: a yoga class with fauna particular to the cold northern climes of the subarctic. Reindeer.
In a grassy pen at the Running Reindeer Ranch, adult and baby reindeer are milling around — grazing, nosing curiously at water bottles, and pawing yoga mats as people shake them out for class.
The air is buzzing with mosquitoes, and the sky is threatening rain, but a good two dozen or so people have shown up for this petting zoo and exercise experience.
"I've wanted to do goat yoga, but this is like one step up," says Tarah Hoxsie, one of the attendees. "This is like the ultimate, OK. So while everybody's doing goat yoga in the lower 48, we're doing reindeer yoga, which is way cooler."
Unrelated: Regular Meditation More Beneficial Than Vacation
Reindeer Collision Avoidance App
Norway to Exterminate Reindeer Herd to Combat Chronic Wasting Disease
Reindeer Are Eating Seaweed to Survive Climate Change, Scientists Say
[Ed. Note: Yes, this story submission has nothing to do with STEM. But, it did give me a chuckle. And it reminded me of a quote by George Carlin “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” So it's good to be aware of what some people think is a "good idea(TM)" and have a good laugh once in a while, too.]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:49PM
For example, vehicles could emit high frequency sounds that only deer can hear. A more localized approach would be putting high-frequency transmitters along stretches of roads prone to deer accidents, that are triggered by wireless signals sent from a half mile away when vehicle motion is detected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:04PM
Mmmm... Confusius says: if there's no reindeer to hear the sound, does the vehicle still emits that high frequency?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:29PM
I live in deer country so this is a topic where I live. Everyone knows the marketing people have intensely pushed the meme of ultrasound scaring away deer, and I think most people know that meme, unfortunately no one has told the deer nor has anyone told ma nature because deer can't hear ultrasound and simply don't care. Their ears just are not that capable. The periodic debunking human interest stories that come out like clockwork every deer hunting season sometimes claim their high freq limit is below ours and tops out around six KHz as per biology dissection and testing of deer skull innards plus testing at zoos, but the details don't matter when the general problem is humans hear high freqs better than deer do, so any whistle that doesn't push the driver into insanity will have no effect on the harder of hearing deer. Some deer do possibly hear better than some humans... below six KHz or so frequency.... above six KHz we people outhear deer, unless you're talking about old partially deaf humans vs healthy deer where it gets complicated.
Anyway there is a lot of cargo cult thinking such that in human society with tribal size being what it is, everyone knows someone who has hit a deer unless you're a total hermit, but the odds of you hitting a deer during the useful operating life of a deer repelling magic gadget approaches zero, so therefore its "proven" those gadgets work because people who buy them almost never hit deer. Of course people who don't buy them also almost never hit deer, and they have more money having not wasted money on worthless gadgets.
The logic is also peculiar in that deer in the road already have proven they don't give a F about asphalt, headlights, engine noise, horns, now you're trying to convince me that magically they'll start giving a F about an ultrasonic whistle after they clearly don't give a F about anything else... Yeah I don't think so...
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:45PM
I don't know about reindeer, but I also live in (white-tailed) deer country and I would add to this that the vast majority of deer that get hit are juvenile males that have just been kicked out of the herd. The older females that run the herd are comparatively smart as hell and are absolutely wise to roads, cars, and so on, plus the more subtle signs of human and other hunters. They do learn and the longer they've been around, the more they tend to have "sixth sense" about signs of danger, but the young males are just leaving their protection for the first time, have no clue about hazards like roads, and I believe make up most of the deer that get hit. Because they have no experience, no stimulus is going to clue them in unless maybe it's something they instinctively associate with danger, which would probably also be annoying to humans. On the other hand, any perceptible and consistent signal is enough for the older, wiser deer to keep away, so headlights and engine noise work just fine for them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:42PM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:58PM
They already have high freq emitters for vehicles. http://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/articles/how-effective-are-deer-whistles-to-avoid-vehicle-collisions [deeranddeerhunting.com]
The article pretty accurately reflects my own experience with deer on US roads. I'll add that, in most cases, if you maintain a steady speed in your vehicle, the deer will ignore you. If, as you approach, your vehicle makes some appreciable change in sound, the deer will spook. That is, if you get on the brakes to avoid the deer, your vehicle will sound different, and that will spook the deer - often into your path. That seems to remain true whether you have the little whistles, or not.
I will say that the best seeming evidence that some of those whistles DO WORK, is that deer look up at the passing vehicle more frequently when they are in use. In my experience, they look up, identify the source of the sound, then go back to eating.
We have conditioned the deer quite well to mostly ignore vehicular traffic.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:09PM
An even better hands-on article from a motorcycle nut. He dug into the backgrounds of some of the competing gadgets, in addition to testing gadgets - http://www.thevog.net/threads/deer-whistles-do-they-really-work-an-in-depth-report-by-fred-rau.3439/ [thevog.net]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:38PM
The author of the linked article mentions he conducted tests:
To help me with the testing and evaluation, I enlisted the aid of a professional animal behavior expert, employed by one of the largest and most prestigious zoological societies in the country. The actual testing was performed after-hours and/or somewhat scrumptiously in the back lots at a nationally-recognized wild Animal Park
Most of his article seems to be devoted to a literature survey, which he claims largely debunks the idea that the commercial devices are or could be effective in reducing vehicle/deer accidents. But where are the results of his tests?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:56PM
Because everybody know reindeer will stay in the warning place...
I got a better idea. Some coal heated radiator grills... you catch a reindeer on it, you have your dinner ready by the time you get home. You may even connect those grilles onto the IoT and make them communicate with the driveless car embedded device driver - others\ may want to set their car in "hunting mode" and have the grille preheated in advance of reaching the warning place. (grin)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:01PM
Spikes on the front for a fresh kill, robotic lifting mechanism to flip the deer over the top and into the back.
We know it's you!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:44PM
A simple, one-button interface
The innovation is the UI.
Waze and other services have had that functionality on smartphones for years. There are two problems with Waze. One is on the supply side, if you're going 80 mph and you see a deer (or a cop or whatever you gotta announce) it takes 10 seconds to grab the phone, 5 to unlock, 30 to find the app, 20 to start the slow as F app, 30 second to navigate thru the menus to find the "you've got deer" button, then maybe another 10 second to make your report. At 80 MPH you're miles away by the time you make a report and unless the deer is running along side as fast as it can, the report is gonna be useless. On the demand side there's nothing I can do but brace myself for the collision. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Alt-route because a deer was there 15 minutes ago but is long gone now? Slam on the breaks and get rear ended or spin off the road when I haven't even personally seen the deer yet?
It helps a little that a hardware button is faster making the warning more useful (well, in theory) so perhaps I could warn the five cars behind me if I see a deer. If any of them are using the app.
Mostly waze makes people think they're making a difference, and think they're informed, when they clearly are not although I'm sure it feels very good at the time. Which makes it political, waze is inherently far left wing, very progressive, in the thought process itself behind the app.
Of course you know people like raising hell so they'll be people hitting buttons for fun just to mess with the population.
Now what would be useful and maybe even possible is the aircraft carrier concept of every car has a drone hanger full of rechargeable drones and you got three drones in the air providing close air support for your car at all times. I suspect a drone could physically scare the hell out of a deer if the drone decided the deer was going to get hit. Or warn off a little kid, maybe. I suppose in high traffic areas the drones could cooperate so you'd only launch one, and you'd only need a three drone skirmish line for dark country roads, maybe.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:01PM
Yes, yes, yes... 3 times a yes!!! Even better, the more, the merrier ... having things swarming around you head (or car for this matter) is pure joy [wikipedia.org]
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:20PM
It is surprising video drone downlinks aren't being merged into self driving cars. It should be trivial for a self driving car to parallelize its video inputs to get far better situational awareness than a human driven car could ever have, and the car is essentially an infinite source of recharging power even if the drones only individually have 5 minutes of flight ability. If you're planning a route in a city you could send the drones ahead to check it out.
For the military obviously if you can see it you can kill it, so drones are not popular idea for armor, at least not for ambushes LOL, but if the tank is kinda going "active mode" rather than passive maybe it would work for IED avoidance and stuff. If you're firing the main cannon you're not all that well hidden anyway so may as well launch the surveillance drones to make sure you're not getting flanked.
To say nothing of secret service detail type applications. Assuming they aren't already doing this, of course. You might only have ten protective agents in a transportation caravan but maybe 200 eyes circulating all over continuously, maybe 2000 eyes with extensive computer automation. Sure, go drive by that Texas book depository, nothing bad can happen because there's a drone literally hovering above every window, every single window has its observation drone, watching for anything weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:00PM
In the winter the reflective collars work better as does driving at a safe and controllable speed adjusted for the conditions. The herds can be spread out, so reaching for the phone can take your attention enough off the road that you run into the main group or the outliers.
As far as chasing the reindeer with drones, it might be fun but they could ignore them like they do now with the helicopters. A while back some reindeer herders, mostly in Sweden, got the idea to chase them with the helicopters. It worked great for a while, but then when the reindeer figured out there was no harm, they'd just hunker down in the rotor wash and wait for the helicopter to go away.
I've worked and traveled a lot in reindeer herding areas and once visited various herding areas in Russia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Currently I live in such a zone. Neighbors herd (of sorts) and the sorting yard / slaughter yard is a short walk out back.
Personality-wise the reindeer are more like a cross between a cat and a donkey than a white tail deer. They're quite inquisitive and friendly and stubborn. They will occasionally jump sideways into the path of the car when trotting along the side. There are usually a few key animals that the herd follow, an animal or two that the herd gather around, some that dig access to the food under the snow, and a key animal or two that stay on the periphery, and many more. If you could get a long-life GPS on a key reindeer or two that the herd gather around, then you could have real time proximity warnings.
Then again they are not tall even if they are a bit heavy. So if you have a pickup truck and stout roo bars, you'll not have to watch out as much for reindeer, though moose will be no less deadly. But so far I've not seen anyone import roo bars from Australia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:54PM
Nearly all U.S. flights were suspended after the 9-11 attacks. All Christian countries should do the same every Christmas. Best way to avoid collisions with magical reindeer.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:57PM
about 50 drivers are killed by moose each year.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:02AM
Moose don't have cellphones, b'y
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:13AM
Is it me or is that backwards? Most of the time if your livestock/pet wanders onto the roadway and a car hits it, you’re liable for damages to the car. Since, you know, roads are for cars not animals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @10:00AM
That's a very American point of view, you only have had roads for a couple of houndred years or so? Roads was invented a couple of thousands years before cars.
If you hit somehing on the road you hit something on the road. And if you hit something on the road you didn't drive in in a safe manner. You are responsible if you hit somehing and that doesn't change due to what you hit. You are responsible if you hit a deer, horse, bicylclist, kid, Kid(pun) or other livstock, pet, a fallen tree or anything else.