Los Gatos Resident Tracks Man-Beast Collisions With RoadKillApp

Flat polecat? There’s an app for that.

Michelle Pitcher of the Mercury News reports on Los Gatos resident Michael Schneider and the app he co-developed to keep tabs on road-killed animals. On Summit Road, where he lived, Schneider had plenty of casualties to view; Highway 17 can be a gory place, thanks to the fast cars and the dark forest the road curves through. Pitcher cites a Reuters article saying that in California, the price of man-beast collisions was $276 million … at least that’s how much it was the last time that someone crunched the numbers, in 2016.

Schneider, the entrepreneurial type, mulled over whether such an app could identify hotspots where roadkill was epidemic and warn drivers to take extra caution. For that matter, it could tip off those who practice taxidermy or who field-dress and cook roadkill. (Pitcher doesn’t mention this, but in Alaska, a state warning system advises pre-registered participants if a moose has been knocked over, so they can rush to the scene and ready it for the smokehouse.) Schneider joined forces with a friend, Daniel Prakash, and thus RoadKillApp debuted. Drivers nationwide can report dead animals to a nationwide database with GPS technology. Even without marketing, both Georgia and Ohio’s departments of transportation have shown interest.

Read more on MercuryNews.com: “Los Gatos man co-creates app to document roadkill.”