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Soft-top down, windows open, road rock blaring out, dead insects on your windscreen… yes, summer can add a few flies to the ointment in your quest to be ‘car cool’.
It is estimated that well over 51 billion insects meet a sticky end on our cars every year in the UK.
Who’s counting? Well, Dr Mark Hostetler, pioneer of ’splatology’ for one. An Associate Professor of the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida, Hostetler is the author of the poetically named That Gunk on Your Car, a book that identifies deceased insects by the body-fluid skidmarks they leave behind.
Some of the more gruesome discoveries unearthed in this insect-world CSI are that butterflies and moths leave a gooey, lumpy white and yellow substance on your windscreen, while horse and deer flies a dirty-white mark with a smear of red if they’ve just finished dining on animal blood. Nice.
So, unless you like your bonnet resembling a Jackson Pollock-esque artwork (’Insect Meets Car’, perhaps?) you’ll have bit of cleaning on your hands this summer.
However, removing the deceased could spell further bad news for the environment. According to the International Car Wash Association, a domestic drive-way car-wash tends to use between 100 and 350 litres of water. Indeed, 30 minutes spent brandishing a hosepipe will use more water than the average family gets through in a whole day of domestic use.
Going back to basics with a good old bucket and sponge, preferably a bucket filled from a water butt, could use up to eight times less water. And if you’re prepared to forego even the bucket, there are a range of virtually waterless car-cleaning products now available too.
Other ways of reducing the environmental impact of your car-cleaning ritual include washing your pride-and-joy in the shade to minimise evaporation, and using lemon juice on your alloy wheels, rather than potentially environmentally-damaging chemicals.
And if you’d rather the multi-legged ones steered clear of your car altogether? Try sticking to light colours when choosing your motor. Insects, especially those that live in wetlands, apparently often mistake shiny car surfaces for breeding habitat, and try to lay eggs on them. A report by Hungarian scientists found that the bugs were most attracted to red and dark-coloured cars, because of the way light reflects in a horizontal direction from the darker surfaces, resembling water.
We’re not sure how much cleaning time you’ll free up by having the right colour car, but it will surely be enough for you to play detective with this interactive splatology game.
IMAGE by Flickr user Luis F Franco
