Six percent of humans go out of their way to hit animals on the road
Mark Rober of NASA conducted the “roadkill experiment” and found 6 percent of drivers purposefully swerve to hit animals.
NASA engineer Mark Rober just pointed out that statistically 6 percent of drivers are animal hating crazy people. Scientifically speaking, Rober was studying roadkill science.
For his experiment Rober planted rubber snakes, turtles and tarantulas on the shoulder of the road and then observed the actions of 1,000 vehicles, MSN reported. Rober found that 6 percent of drivers are — "cold-blooded rubber-animal killers," and are willing to put themselves in harms way just to run over an animal on the side of the road.
MSN compared Rober's findings to a 2008 study that used the Psychopathy Checklist, which discovered that 1.2 percent of the US population were potential psychopaths.
Complex.com listed off a few more of Rober's findings including:
- 6 percent of motorists will swerve to run over an animal.
- If you ignore the tarantula, 2.8 percent swerve to kill.
- Nobody goes out of their way to run over a leaf.
- 89 percent of the people who did swerve to kill drove SUVs.
Check out Rober's full experiment video for NASA:
The World is an independent newsroom. We’re not funded by billionaires; instead, we rely on readers and listeners like you. As a listener, you’re a crucial part of our team and our global community. If you’ve been thinking about making a donation, this is the best time to do it. Your support is vital to running our nonprofit newsroom, and we can’t do this work without you. All donations between now and June 30 will be matched 2:1. Will you help keep our newsroom on strong footing by giving to The World?