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Comment by cowmix | Hacker News Reader

There's been a lot of these stories in the past year and, like all trendy reporting, I'm not sure how serious I should take them in whole. However, I can say this: I've been driving between Phoenix and Tucson consistently for 30+ years. For those of you who don't know, it is a 90+ mile ride which is almost all at top highway speed. I've noticed in the past year or two my windshield is much, much cleaner post drive whereas years ago I would almost be forced to clean my car after each trip.

Unscientific, but unsettling nonetheless.

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This is a point that has been mentioned in many of the articles on this subject lately, and one of the research programs I read about is measuring exactly this. They took a bunch of volunteers and counted the number of bugs on their windshields after driving a certain distance to estimate the flying insect population in that area. And yes, there is a huge reduction in population. The more concerning statistic is that insect populations are also plummeting in remote rain forests with no pesticide use.

One should however take into account that the aerodynamics of cars changed considerably the past 20 years possibly leading to less by-catch.

probably true to some extent, but then driving experience of some older car (many of which still work perfectly fine) should cover this possibility

That doesn't really explain why even the license plates remain clean, does it?

When I grew up we had grasshoppers in every lawn, always and everywhere. These days I hardly see or hear any.

Also anecdotal, but:

My parents would talk all the time about catching lightning bugs as kids. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I didn't see a single one. Now, the back yard is absolutely full of them (again, apparently.)

What the heck? I grew up in the same era, and lightning bugs were what you did late night out in the yard as a kid.

I’m in Japan and we have a ton of grasshoppers. I can’t step in the grass near my garden without seeing some jumping around. Mantis are tricky, really hard to see them but when you are so close they look at you like you don’t belong there. Creepy.

I have a special affinity for mantises. They have an almost otherworldly quality to them.

I'm also extremely grateful that they're smaller than us. A dog sized mantis would be the stuff of nightmares and horse sized mantises would pretty much have guaranteed our extinction long before now.

I drive two hours from West Georgia to Montgomery, AL every other day. Zero...zero bugs on the windshield. Also we live out in the country and in the last 3 years I have seen exactly one firefly. 20 years ago in the suburbs (closer into Atlanta) they were uncountable there were so many. Anecdotal but still a very weird feeling at night. Fire ants on the other hand seem to be doing just fine.

Could killing tens of thousands of bugs (or more) per vehicle be contributing to the decline in numbers at all ? There are a crazy amount of bugs on earth I get it but still, this surely has to have an impact.

People talk about having their car totally caked in bugs at one time etc, given other environmental stressors it’s not going to help if healty populations are exterminated en masse.

> I've noticed in the past year or two my windshield is much, much cleaner post drive whereas years ago I would almost be forced to clean my car after each trip.

I've seen mentions this phenomena floating around. I wonder if this could be attributed to a change in the aerodynamics of modern windshields.

No. You could see them before hitting the windshield. Unless modern windshields have a Star Trek deflector shield, that's not it.

Only an anecdote, but I'm going to say no.

Mainly as I have strongly experienced the same phenomena motorcycling. My head and helmet are not changed aerodynamically. A naked bike contributes little. Yet headlight and visor catch far fewer than 30 years ago. I don't expect to break the journey to clear it like I used to.

The windscreen on the car may very well catch less, but in that case it also seems like there are a lot less to catch.

Anecdotally: my uncle has been driving an '88 Oldsmobile Cutlass for the last 30 years. I remember riding in that car as a kid, and him giving me an uncle-y lecture about how when your windshield is caked with bugs, you don't want to run the wipers, because it will just smear them all around and make it hard to see. He then demonstrated that to me, something I remember vividly (we stopped at a gas station shortly after to wipe them off with a squeegee). Last summer, driving on that same road by the lake, same time in the early evening, I commented on some of the bugpocalypse stories I had read. He hadn't really thought about it before, but his Cutlass' windshield was dramatically cleaner than the night I remember in the early 90's.

Odd that you mention this, I recently moved to Iowa and have noticed that I hardly have to clean my windshield from the bugs. I realize this is anecdotal, but I do remember a time as a kid where like you I had to clean the windshield often.

The same in Michigan. I remember as a kid we took long trips and our car was absolutely covered with bugs. As an adult I took the same trips and barely any splattered bugs.

As a kid, we'd have to stop on our summer car trips and scrape bugs of the windshield. Nowadays... never happens. I get frightened by the (very) occasional bug hitting the windscreen.

I can't help but wonder if there's some evolutionary adaptation going on: the bugs that avoided cars all survived, so their offspring are less likey to go near cars?

Or maybe the massive increase in car usage, globally, has simply eradicated large percentages of flying insect populations?

I mean, think about it, for decades we've been building highways, which also have become increasingly more busy with car traffic. So not only did we increase coverage of these massive "fly swatters", we also keep increasing the rate at which they swat insects.

Doesn't need to be the only factor, but coupled with the massive use of insecticides, and the loss of natural environments, it might as well be a very contributing factor.

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