Drivers are only just learning what those 'weird' wires over the motorway are actually for

A British motorist was left baffled after spotting ‘weird’ wires overhead while driving along the motorway, so she turned to Reddit to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

If you’ve driven on certain roads in a handful of European countries, including the UK and France, you might have seen them yourself. 

The structures typically consist of poles placed on either side of the motorway with wires stretched from one side to the other. 

They look a little bit like telephone polls, but they actually serve a very different purpose.

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The ‘weird’ wire structures have an interesting purpose

The motorist said she had seen the ‘weird’ structures overhead for ‘decades’ but had never actually understood their purpose. 

“What are these things over roads?” she asked. 

“I’ve always been told it’s for animals, but being clueless, I can’t imagine a rabbit or vole hopping up and over without falling through the holes!”

She said she had tried using Google Lens to find an answer, but had been told they were telegraph poles, which she knew wasn’t the correct answer. 

Fortunately for her, it didn’t take long for fellow users of the AskUK subreddit to reveal the truth, and it seems her original thoughts weren’t a million miles away from being correct. 

While they weren’t designed for ‘rabbits or voles’, they were designed for animals.

In fact, the structures were designed to help bats. 

The wires are known as bat bridges and were installed to encourage bats to cross busy roads at a sufficient height to avoid traffic. 

While there were several people who knew exactly what the ‘weird’ wires were used for, others admitted to being equally clueless. 

“I learnt something new today,” one person said. 

Someone else said they had always assumed they were to ‘reroute essential wiring during roadworks’. 

Well, now we know.

And here’s how the ‘weird’ wires actually work on the motorway

The bat bridges are often introduced to areas where the hedgerows have been removed.

Bats are thought to use the lines of hedgerows to navigate, and without them can run the risk of being injured by vehicles.

“The idea is that they encourage bats to fly higher, out of the way of passing vehicles,” one Reddit user explained. 

“When the ground is lowered for the motorways, these things are built above. 

“Bats detect it with their sonar as if it were a hedgerow. Bats don’t fly into traffic.”

Pretty clever stuff.

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