VW badge that could slash roo roadkill

Forget those little stick-on kangaroo deterrents . . . Volkswagen has revealed that road testing has begun on its RooBadge. It replaces a Volkswagen’s front badge and sends out a high frequency mix of natural and artificial sounds to ward off kangaroos.

It has taken Volkswagen Australia and the DDB Group in consultation with the University of Melbourne and WIRES more than three years to develop RooBadge.

It is a circular disc, about 17cm in diameter, which replaces the Volkswagen bonnet badge. It connects to an app, calibrates the car’s GPS co-ordinates with kangaroo distribution data. This triggers a specific audio deterrent tailored to the kangaroo species living in that area.

RooBadge could save human and kangaroo lives and injuries, and a significant cost in damage to VWs. Collisions with kangaroos comprise about 90 per cent of on-road wildlife accidents nationally.

After extensive trials, permission has been given from the University of Melbourne Office of Research Ethics and Integrity to move to trials with kangaroos in the wild.

Despite all the stick-on roo alarms most of us have bought over the years, none have been scientifically developed or proven.

Melbourne University’s Associate Professor Graeme Coulson explains: “It’s difficult to produce a single sound that will deter all kangaroos, because the species are different to each other. Using advancement in car technology we can change the sound deterrent by GPS location.

“RooBadge does something no kangaroo deterrent has been able to do before. We have worked on sounds that will be meaningful to Eastern Grey Kangaroos, things like dingo calls, alarm calls made by birds and the alarm thumps that kangaroos make to warn each other. We will then be able to tweak the sound for other species.”

John Grant, a spokesperson for WIRES, Australia’s biggest wildlife rescue organisation, adds: “Kangaroo collisions are increasing every year and with more motorists on the roads over the Easter holiday period we are expecting a spike in rescue calls for injured adults and displaced joeys.

“WIRES is grateful to automotive companies like Volkswagen for researching and developing solutions to better protect both our kangaroos and motorists.”

Director of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Ryan Davies says: “Why is Volkswagen investing time and energy in this project? Because we can and it’s the right thing to do.

“A collision with a roo can be devastating. It is not easily forgotten once seen, and certainly not if experienced. Then there’s the possibility of a front-on collision with an approaching vehicle at country road speeds when one driver is trying to avoid striking a kangaroo. These are even more likely to have a fatal human outcome.”

And the University of Melbourne’s Dr Helen Bender, whose research has contributed extensively to the project, adds: “Roadkill is a problem all around the world. What’s interesting about deer relative to kangaroos is that they’re very similar in body size, head size, and ear size. What we know from science is that the ear shape in the head shape tells us that they probably have similar hearing ranges. So, whatever we learn has transferability to the deer as well.”

volkswagen.com.au/roobadge