What happens if you hit a cat with your car?
The answer right now, in the UK, is not a lot — but that could be about to change.
When I learnt to drive (within the last decade), the matter of what to do about animals in the road came up in conversation. In the UK it’s fairly common for farm animals to roam freely, and we have all sorts of wildlife with zero road sense. In my theory test, the interactive hazard perception question had a random sheep jump out at me (I laughed; the test facilitator was not impressed). The answer is that you should perform an emergency stop if safe to do so — and you don’t have long to decide that — and that’s where there can be some conflict. Chances are that if you run over a cat, your vehicle won’t suffer much damage and you could just keep going — and that’s what I was explicitly told to do. Keep moving with the traffic; don’t slow down or stop, else it could fail you on your driving test. The logic is that if you brake or swerve to avoid hitting a cat, you’re creating unnecessary danger for other road users.
In reality, this scenario would almost never arise on a driving test. You’d have to be so damn unlucky to have that happen to you, but I guess you have to prepare for any eventuality. On a regular day, if you’re a decent human being, you’d at the very least pull over and check on the animal, but as the law stands there is absolutely no requirement…
