Apparently, Mark Rober has a lot of free time in his hands, which is something you wouldn’t normally expect from someone who works as a Mechanical Engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the same unit that is responsible for the Mars Curiosity Rover.
What you would expect from a scientist like Rober is to have diverse interests and an inquisitive mindset, which would explain his latest experiment about motorists and roadkills.
“I read a long time ago that people will swerve more to hit turtles over snakes… as a firm believer in the scientific method, I decided to test this hypothesis,” says Rober.
And how did he conduct this experiment? Well, Rober hit the field placing rubber animals including a tarantula (spider), snake and a turtle along with a leaf on a certain section of the road and then sat down and checked the reactions of…1,000 drivers.
Rober discovered that 94 percent of all drivers didn’t do anything but 6 percent went out of their way to run over the animals, most of which targeted the tarantulas (3.2%), followed by the snake (1.8%) and the turtle (1%), while nobody hit the leaf.
The “killers'” vehicles of choice were trucks and SUVs (89%), while Rober also found out that drivers were more prone to save the turtle than any other animal.
You can watch the video for yourself right past the break.
Story References: YouTube via Gizmodo
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