If you love animals, roadkill is a sad consequence of humans building roads through wild habitats.

If you love people, then be concerned that many die from colliding (or swerving to avoid) with animals on the road.

Roadkill can be avoided using technology. Using the type of sensors predicted by the Internet of Things, and combined with high-powered computing, it should be possible to keep track of wild animals without physically tagging them. All you need is enough HD cameras in the right locations to film wildlife, and combine that with a mapping system. From the imagery alone computers will (in the future) be able to identify individual animals. The mapping system will be able to track them.

Scenario: driving along an Australian road where kangaroos are known to cross.

The system, with all of its low cost, strategically-placed cameras can tell that a group of 10 kangaroos are lingering within 200m of a road. People driving by are informed of the risk and they slow down (or their self-driving cars do so automatically). If/when the kangaroos bound across the road, the potential for collision is substantially reduced – a better result for all involved.

The technology exists, it just needs to become cheap enough to easily deploy. The algorithms required are achievable, but will take time to refine.