Animals – specifically kangaroos – are involved in about a third of all road accidents across the region.
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In fact, according to an insurance company, collisions with animals on our local roads are nearly 70 times the average in Sydney where most prangs are nose-to-tail hits.
The AAMI Crash Index showed that over a 12-month period, 36.66 per cent of accidents in New England involved animals.
While AAMI couldn’t give the Country Leader species-specific statistics for this area, the company’s spokesman indicated 90 per cent of animals hit across the nation are kangaroos.
“Then you have wallabies and wombats at around 8 per cent,” he said. “Cows, sheep, cats, dogs and even camels [account for] around 1-2 per cent [of animal collisions nationally].”
The second-most prevalent cause of accidents in New England were collisions with stationary objects, like trees or road barriers.
This type of accident accounted for a quarter (26.44 per cent) of all accidents in the region.
Nose-to- tail collisions in the region were nearly four times lower than the average for Sydney, indicative of the vastly different population densities and traffic congestion levels.
These figures were based on accident insurance claims across the country from August 2015 to August 2016.