• shalafi@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • doc@fedia.io
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      7 days ago

      Took the words out of my mouth. I used to plan for a car wash after every trip through the countryside. Haven’t done that going on 15 years now. Amazing how few people notice.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      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.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        This is definitely true. I usually drive rentals and totally noticed how safer tilted windshields are.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          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.

    • cleanandsunny
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      7 days ago

      I’ve definitely noticed. When I was a kid in the South, lovebug season was a whole thing. I got drafted to wash the car constantly. Last time I was down there during lovebug season driving around, I didn’t see a single one. No splats, no scraping bugs out of the grill, nothing. No fireflies either. It is depressing. I’m a city girl now, but I still keep a densely planted organic flower garden. Even with huge patches of native flowers, I see very few pollinators, and it really bums me out. But I do often see bees sleeping in my flowers, so there’s that.

    • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I drove from San Diego to Boston with my buddy a couple years back and it never even crossed our minds to wipe the windshields the entire trip

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      6 days ago

      I recently drove from the North of England to the South of France. Almost as soon as we crossed the Channel we were instantly getting insects splattered on the windscreen to the point we had to refill buy some bright pink no-nonsense washer fluid at the next services.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    They’re 70-80% gone here since around ‘20, anecdotally as someone who’s driven the same highway corridor day and night.

    They still get hit by the vehicle, but there is a profoundly apparent absence.

  • rockstarmode@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    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

      • madjo@feddit.nl
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        4 days ago

        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.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Last week.

    But cars tend to have more of a slant to the windows then they used to, so less bugs smack and splatter.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      7 days ago

      I drove through miles of a literal swarm of cicadas a few years ago and 99% of them didn’t splat on the windshield. My roof rack was coated with bug guts, though.

  • RealSpiderLane@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    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.

  • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    sadly, global warming is killing them. I remember years ago they’d splatter my windshield every commute

  • TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    Not really on my windshield often but my bumper and mirrors are covered within a few miles of driving. Maybe it’s an aerodynamics thing?

  • madjo@feddit.nl
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    4 days ago

    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.

  • chloroken@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Insect populations are affected by human urbanization.

    In other words, the area you live in has become more developed over the last few decades and has become a poorer ecosystem for insects.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    I live near a metro so its not as noticable but yeah 50 years ago you would get some. More significantly you did not need to go far (you could reach it in a day trip. say within 2 hours away) and you would have your windshield plastered. Basically out were you could see some farmland. Even in the 90’s though going to school downstate you did not see much and Every so often I have trips across states and even down south and stays crystal clear. I will note besides insect decline there is a thing were more airodynamic vehicles don’t get as many. The air flows around and the insects are more likely to survive. That being said just going camping and such im amazed at how few insects there are. I used to get eaten alive.

  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      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.