When was the last time an insect splash on your windshield?
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You've activated my "thing". No one seems to have noticed that the bottom of the ecosystem just fucking dropped out.
When I was a child, dad taught me to always clean the windshield when we stopped for gas, and sometimes in between. I have not done this in years, easily more than a decade.
We drive hundreds of miles of back country highway to pick up my kids. Talking the South here, mostly Alabama which is 77% wooded. Nada.
Screw it, I could tell stories for an hour, too depressing to go on.
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You've activated my "thing". No one seems to have noticed that the bottom of the ecosystem just fucking dropped out.
When I was a child, dad taught me to always clean the windshield when we stopped for gas, and sometimes in between. I have not done this in years, easily more than a decade.
We drive hundreds of miles of back country highway to pick up my kids. Talking the South here, mostly Alabama which is 77% wooded. Nada.
Screw it, I could tell stories for an hour, too depressing to go on.
A part of it is how car aerodynamics have changed.
My work car has a flatter windshield and gets a lot more bug splatter than my personal car.
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Every day, over and over and over... I have to keep actual glass cleaner in my car and spray the windshield occasionally—like at stop lights by sticking my arm out the window—because not even the "bug remover" windshield washer fluid works well enough. You need something strong like ammonia to loosen all the protein.
Note: I don't live in a city.
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A part of it is how car aerodynamics have changed.
My work car has a flatter windshield and gets a lot more bug splatter than my personal car.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is definitely true. I usually drive rentals and totally noticed how safer tilted windshields are.
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Maybe this question should also request the responder's general location, because I imagine the situations vary substantially.
I've lived in California for most of my life, and we go on frequent drives between LA and SF, usually a few times a year.
In the 80's and 90's bugs would cover the front of our vehicles and the windshield would be difficult to see through even with wipers and washer fluid. We'd actually have to stop to manually scrape them off.
In the 00's and 10's we noticed that we'd get basically zero bugs on a long drive, and that sparked many conversations about California environmental law.
I just got back from a drive up the coast and I can happily say that we're back to insane numbers of bug strikes on the highway. Just north of Ventura I drove through a cloud of large bugs that hit like rocks and instantly covered almost my entire windshield. This situation has been noticably turning around since COVID, which I think is a good thing
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Is there a word missing in that question?
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Maybe this question should also request the responder's general location, because I imagine the situations vary substantially.
I've lived in California for most of my life, and we go on frequent drives between LA and SF, usually a few times a year.
In the 80's and 90's bugs would cover the front of our vehicles and the windshield would be difficult to see through even with wipers and washer fluid. We'd actually have to stop to manually scrape them off.
In the 00's and 10's we noticed that we'd get basically zero bugs on a long drive, and that sparked many conversations about California environmental law.
I just got back from a drive up the coast and I can happily say that we're back to insane numbers of bug strikes on the highway. Just north of Ventura I drove through a cloud of large bugs that hit like rocks and instantly covered almost my entire windshield. This situation has been noticably turning around since COVID, which I think is a good thing
80's and 90's
'80s and '90s
00's and 10's
'00s and '10s
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Is there a word missing in that question?
"Splashed" can mean to destroy mid flight I think
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Almost every day. Rural living.
I mean i live in a rural area (The whole state has less people than the city i grew up in, and my town has <2k people) and the bug splatter is way less than growing up in a top 10 US city as a kid in the 80s-90s.
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This is definitely true. I usually drive rentals and totally noticed how safer tilted windshields are.
While we're at it, I have a bug/air deflector on the nose of my Subaru and I can report that it does indeed appear to work. My truck, conversely, is just a rolling brick and every bug in the county seems to wind up on its windshield. On the Scoob, they splat into the front bumper instead. Most of the ones above that presumably sail right over the roof, except the really big ones.
Bug strike volume overall in my area has not diminished noticeably since my childhood (i.e. it's still maddeningly incessant) but that sort of thing appears to be quite localized and I don't have to go too many miles before I wind up in areas that are eerily free of bugs.
In other news, my primary method of transportation is a motorcycle for much of the year and chiseling the little bastards off of your helmet daily -- or multiple times per day -- is just a fact of life.
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Every day, over and over and over... I have to keep actual glass cleaner in my car and spray the windshield occasionally—like at stop lights by sticking my arm out the window—because not even the "bug remover" windshield washer fluid works well enough. You need something strong like ammonia to loosen all the protein.
Note: I don't live in a city.
I am positive that the bug removal windshield washer fluid has never actually worked on bug splatters. Not even if you spritz them immediately when they happen, and even if you did you'd go through two gallons of the stuff per day. It's all marketing; I'm pretty sure they just take the regular stuff and dye it green instead of blue and charge three times more for it.
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Is there a word missing in that question?
Probably meant “smashed” instead of “splashed“.
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Two days ago.
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Few days ago. Went birding in a wetland conservation area. Tons of birds. Megatons of bugs.
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80's and 90's
'80s and '90s
00's and 10's
'00s and '10s
What's with the downvotes? Corsicanpuppy is right, that's how you abbreviate decades.
The apostrophe denotes the removed 19 and 20, as in 1980s => '80s and 2000s => '00s.
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I've been wondering the same. It's been years. I live in western Europe. Could be an example of evolution, insects that fly higher survive more often, or climate change, there's fewer insects about.
It used to be a big issue, now the biggest issue is bird poop and lice excretions.
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This morning on my way to work. (Rural Ohio here.)
I’ll tell ya a better story. Years ago, my band at the time were on the road, heading to a show around Elkins, West Virginia. We were somewhere in the vicinity of St. Clairsville, OH, when at like 70mph, a giant locust flies in my drummer’s window. We thought it was a hummingbird at first, but the thing is panic-flying around, hitting us in the face, etc. I’m still amazed we didn’t wreck.
