Is there a word missing in that question?
“Splashed” can mean to destroy mid flight I think
I recently drove half a continent. Anyways, probably 10-20 years. Idk, I don’t really remember it happening much except maybe when I was a young child
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
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.
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.
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
Last time I drove at highway speed: Thursday around 19:40
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.
Almost every day. Rural living.
Live on a farm, I mean, it’s summer, the bug-murder season. This is like asking “when did you last breath oxygen?”
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.
Last week.
But cars tend to have more of a slant to the windows then they used to, so less bugs smack and splatter.
I’m driving the same car since 2006. It’s gone way down.
Well a car from 2006 isn’t going to stay pristine forever so it’s no surprise it’s gone down over the past 20 years.
That makes no sense.
The aerodynamics haven’t changed.
sadly, global warming is killing them. I remember years ago they’d splatter my windshield every commute
Light pollution is also a big one. Impacts migration, reproduction and predation.
That, but I’d put pesticides and environment devastation to more blame.
A couple of years ago, but I don’t drive all that far most days. It sure seems like there are fewer and fewer. For instance, last summer, I saw fireflies for the first time in over a decade. This can’t be good.
Yesterday. It’s cicada season.
Every time I take a trip out of the city.
Generally, I NEED to clean it every 300 miles due to not being able to see through the sheet of bug-goo covering my windshield.
I remember it being like that decades ago - a long car trip might have required more stops to clean the windshield than to get gas. Not in a very long time though. Now I do get at least one hit per week but I don’t have to clean it even as frequently as I get car washes.
Where are you that there are still bugs (other than mosquitoes)?
A few months ago when I still lived in Brandenburg in Germany (I had to clean my windscreen regularly). Haven’t had a single one in Baden-Württemberg. I wonder if the wine growers use more pesticides.
When I lived in England my windscreen was suspiciously empty too.
Was talking about this a few weeks ago. Then we spent a week on the Gulf coast of TX, and the rental car collected a pretty good number of bugs. Not as much as when I was younger, but more than I remember seeing in a long time.
