Road safety campaigners are calling for more to be done to ensure motorists report when they have hit an animal with their car, potentially even resulting in Highway Code changes.
Several petitions are calling on the Department for Transport to introduce changes to require drivers to report road accidents involving cats to the police.
Data from PetPlan suggests that around 230,000 cats are hit by cars every year in the UK, with 630 involved in a collision every day.
Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 states that motorists are required to stop and report an accident involving specified animals, although this does not include cats or wild animals.
Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailingmotoring@gbnews.uk
Road safety campaigners are calling for Highway Code changes to protect cats on roads
GETTY/PA
Drivers must report if they hit horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats or dogs, given that these are considered working animals rather than domestic pets.
Rule 286 of the Highway Code outlines what drivers must do if they are involved in an accident where they cause damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property.
Motorists must stop and provide details to "anyone having reasonable grounds for requiring them", including their name, address and registration number of the vehicle.
If someone does not give their name and address at the time of the collision, they should report it to the police as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours.
One petition, which was launched by Kellie Watson and backed by North East charity Pawz for Thought, already has more than 41,000 signatures.
She said: "If this was the law for dogs, which it is, an unbearable amount of animal suffering could be avoided.
"Moreover, it would provide closure to heartbroken owners who may spend weeks or months searching for their lost pet, not knowing what happened to them."
A petition from 2022 received more than 102,000 signatures and resulted in the topic being debated in Parliament the following year.
It called for new legal requirements to report collisions with cats, citing the impact of a pet being hit on the owner's mental health.
The creator of the petition also said that cat owners "feel excluded" by the law since drivers do not need to report collisions with cats, but do with dogs.
A spokesperson for the Government confirmed that it had "no plans" to make it an offence to drive off after hitting a cat.
It added: "A focus for this Government is to make roads safer for all users, which will in turn reduce the risk to all animals.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Petitions have called for more to be done to ensure drivers report collisions with cats
PEXELS"Having a law making it a requirement to report road accidents involving cats would be very difficult to enforce and we have reservations about the difference it would make to the behaviour of drivers, who are aware that they have run over a cat and do not report it."
Under the Conservatives, the Action Plan for Animal Welfare aimed to introduce compulsory cat microchipping to reduce the number of pets that go missing.
