An interesting study of wild chimps in Uganda’s Kibale National Park shows that chimps are extremely cautious when crossing busy roads. The 29 month study observed the chimps’ behavior when crossing busy highways and little traveled roads.
When crossing roads that were rarely traveled, the chimps used little care and crossed in large groups. However, when crossing a busy roadway with cars traveling 45 to 60 mph, the chimps used great care, they looked both ways and, once they were sure the roadway was clear, they crossed quickly in small groups. Fifty-seven percent of the chimps ran across the roadway. As shown in the video above, the older, stronger chimps would wait and make sure younger or weaker chimps crossed safely.
The researchers hope to use the data they gathered to improve roadway safety for the chimps in the park. Road building is on the rise in Africa and African wildlife will be subjected to more and more roadway hazards.
It would almost seem that the same data from the chimp study could be applied to humans but the chimps seem to show much greater care when crossing a highway than humans do. For one thing, chimps will never be seen talking on a cell phone the way sixty percent of pedestrians in the US do when they are crossing roads; nor will you find them with earbuds in their ears listening to an iPod. The chimps will never make eye contact with a driver and expect him to stop in time.
Distracted walking figures are hard to come by but safety experts feel that emergency room figures don’t tell the whole story when it comes to distracted pedestrian injuries. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that, if distracted walking figures are similar to distracted driving figures, there may have been approximately two million pedestrian injuries related to cell phone use in 2010.
Not all of those two million injuries involved pedestrians on roadways but the roadway problem is severe. In 2013, there were 4,735 pedestrians killed and an estimated 66,000 injured in traffic crashes in the United States. Pedestrian deaths have made up fourteen percent of the total number of highway deaths for each of the past three years.
Between distracted drivers and distracted pedestrians, it seems that the people who gather and total up crash data are the only ones paying attention to what happens on the road. Everyone needs to start paying more attention to the road; the way chimps do.