Is Your Cat Likely To Be A Victim Of A Road Traffic Accident?

Posted on 10:00am Tuesday 15th Jan 2019

Cat on the road

Anyone that owns cats that have access to the outdoors lives in fear of one day finding them on the road, a victim of a road traffic accident (RTA). It is, sadly, a regular occurrence even on the quietest of roads and with the most ‘road-savvy’ cats, but are certain cats more likely to become a casualty of our increasingly-busy highways?

According to analysis of over 1,400 cases of cats involved in RTAs, if you’re a young, male, cross-bred cat taking a walk across the road in autumn, your chances of success are not great.

Here is a breakdown of the findings for you:

4.2% of all cats treated at an emergency Vets Now clinic during the time of the two-year trial, were cats that had been involved in a road traffic accident.
Cats between 6 months and 6 years of age are most at risk – presumably due to their lack of road sense and experience.
Male cats were found to be 30% more likely to be a victim than their female counterparts – interestingly, they didn’t add any statistics regarding the proportion of male cats that were not castrated and therefore more likely to be wandering in unfamiliar territory looking for females.

Ginger cat sat in the road

Cross-bred cats were 90% more likely to be involved in an RTA than pure-bred cats – I would think this is because many pure-bred cat owners keep their cats confined to the house and therefore the likelihood of them getting close to a moving vehicle is very low.
A perhaps more random finding was that accidents involving vehicles and cats seem to be at their peak during the autumn months.
As is to be expected, cats don’t generally fare very well when they come up against a tonne of moving metalwork. Of the 1,407 casualties analysed, 94 were dead on arrival whilst 433 were euthanised during treatment; mostly during the initial consultation.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, cats falling victim to vehicles on our roads is sadly commonplace. I have had my own experience of this devastating event and I chose to share my cats’ story with you all here.