Mark Rober of NASA recently conducted an experiment to see how drivers reacted to driving past animals in the road. According to Rober, most of us try to avoid hitting it. However, 6% of us will apparently go out of our way to kill the animal. According to Gizmodo.com,

He alternatively placed a rubber animal—and a leaf as a control object—on the shoulder of a road: a turtle, a snake, or a spider.

He watched one thousand cars pass by and annotated the drivers' reaction.

The results are quite surprising.

He found out that 94 percent of drivers did what anyone in their sane mind would do: keep driving on their lane. Remember that the animals were on the road's shoulder, way outside their driving path. They didn't pose any danger whatsoever to the drivers' safety.

On the other hand, six percent went out of the driving lane to run over the animals. Think about that: sixty out of one thousand drivers actually went out of their way to kill a living thing that didn't represent any danger to their lives—and risking their own lives in the process, no less. Six percent were just cruel because they could be. For their own sadistic pleasure, I can only imagine.

Keep in mind that the rubber animals he used were turtles, snakes and spiders. I feel like if he had used bunnies, kittens and chipmunks, the number of people that went out of their way to run over an animal would have been significantly lower.

Have you ever went out of your way to kill an animal on the road? Let us know by taking our poll below.


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