Road traffic is a major cause of hedgehog death in the UK and Europe, causing traumatic injuries and prolonged deaths. Simple infrastructure and behavioral interventions can dramatically reduce this toll.
Road trauma is one of the most common causes of suffering for wild hedgehogs in urban and rural Europe. Vehicle strikes cause blunt force trauma — fractured skulls, internal bleeding, and spinal injuries that rarely cause immediate death. Animals may crawl to roadside vegetation and die over several hours from their injuries. Because hedgehogs are primarily nocturnal and forage along road verges, the risk of vehicle encounter is high. Wildlife rehabilitation centers treat thousands of road-casualty hedgehogs annually, with limited survival rates for severely injured animals. Prevention through infrastructure — tunnels, culverts, road-edge vegetation management — is far more effective than treatment.