No elephants

As with most Australians, I have an interest in sports. This has lead me to become a participant in a sports forum called The Grandstand.

Many Australians also experience the problem of Kangaroos straying onto the roads and causing a hazard. To avoid damage, many vehicles have a big steel bull-bar attached to the front of the vehicle, which will take the impact from a collision with a Kangaroo. This may be good for the car and it's passengers, but it's not good for the Kangaroos.

One solution is the Shoo Roo. This is an electronic device that emits a shrill whistling noise that scares the Kangaroos off the road before the arrival of the car. One of the members of the forum was enquiring as to the effectiveness of the equipment. Another responded that the equipment works because they had it attached to their vehicle and never had problems. This lead another member to state that it must also work for elephants because he had never heard of a car with the shoo roo ever being hit by an elephant.

While said in jest, the comment revealed the logical fallacy of "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc". Just because one event follows another, does not mean that the first event caused the second. In this case, the lack of collisions with Kangaroos since the installation of the equipment may have a different cause. You're not likely to find many Kangaroos jumping down the main streets of Sydney or Melbourne.

I live in an area where there are many Kangaroos on the roads and have not had any collisions since I got my license almost 20 years ago. And thankfully, I am able to say I've not hit any elephants either.

I have not done any research on the Shoo Roo. For all I know it may work and work well. But it will need more than a Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc argument to convince me.