When I was a kid whenever a bug hit the window my father would laugh and sing "I ain't got no body and no body has me" especially when we were on vacation. At the time I thought it was pretty funny. Later I might consider it very Zen in the reality of this truth.
But now, how I look at almost 70 years of watching bugs splat on the front windows of cars is I notice that most places it seems like during summers there are about 70 to 90 % less bugs hitting the windows in places they were before. Like if you were driving up Interstate 5 from Sacramento to Redding through rice farmlands and other types of farmlands your windshield in the 1950s and 1960s would be so bad you would have to stop and clean it off because you just couldn't see anymore.
However, now I can often even in the summer drive up there and all I have to do is a few bug hits on the windshield that I can often clean off with windshield wipers and window cleaning fluid I can spray from inside the car.
The same it true of animals (road kill on the roads). In California road kill was about 10 to 20 times what is is now in the 1950s and 1960s. So, mankind driving cars has killed a whole lot of bugs and animals so there just aren't as many of them now as before.
You might say, "Well. Great! I didn't want all those bugs and animals there anyhow."
But, what about biodiversity? If there are no bugs for birds to eat various species thin out don't reproduce and die. If too many female skunks, raccoons or coyotes are hit by cars that might mean there are going to be less and less and less of them too.
Then on top of that if kids go out and shoot skunks or porcupines or whatever for the fun of it or just don't want them in their yards or let their dogs catch them and kill them for sport there are less of all these animals too around the world.
So, this isn't just in California this is happening worldwide. Cars have been killing bugs and animals and sometimes pet dogs and deer and elk and moose since about the 1880s. Anything that travels 25 miles per hour average or more (or on the road now 60 to 80 miles per hour) on the hiway is going to kill a lot of things over time so there will be less bugs, and animals and birds of all kinds and this is part of what has happened by mankind since around the 1880s here in California and throughout the U.S. and around the world.
I have now a yellow Labrador rescue dog who is 8 years old who joined my family this summer. His favorite thing to do is to chase orange tennis balls thrown with a "Chuckit" orange plastic thrower for distance. However, twice now the ball on a downhill run got away from him and went into a paved road access road that is well traveled. Both times I worried he might be hit too. However, this is only 2 mistakes over thousands of throws where he didn't get the ball in time. I have compensated and just won't throw the ball in sight of the paved road at all any more. Besides, I find it better to be throwing up a fire road in the forest rather than down one because if you throw downhill it is easier to lose the balls which are about 2 for 20 plus dollars these days at a local pet shop.
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