Nudge Bar

To be honest, I don’t think a nudge bar would be any protection against animal strike, unless it was a rabbit!
It is hard to advise against fitting anything, but if you don’t travel at dusk or night, you should be ok.

A nudge bar is for decoration only or to install additional lights. I travel extensively in the outback, including Stuart hwy, have no bull bar and have never had any issues with animals as I avoid travelling between dusk and dawn.

Unless you are really scratching for somewhere to bolt some lights or a UHF antenna, then they are a waste of time.

If you look at how they are attached, it generally just some brackets and 4 bolts. Hit anything substantial and they will bend the brackets or shear the bolts and be pushed back into the bumper anyway, so you still end up with skippy hitting the front of the vehicle... as well as an imprint from some light weight 3" tube.

In the space between the attachment points and under the hoop there is nothing substantial to the bars either, so they provide no additional protection low mounted intercoolers/transmission coolers or the radiator.

Nudge bars IMHO, a waste of time.


Try not to drive into the night, slow down a bit and watch out for emus (miss one and another will jump in front of you).

20 years ago I hit a roo and obliterated the plastic bumper, so I put on a bull bar and haven't hit anything since.
I only have one now as it gives me somewhere to hang some lights and a winch and was cheaper than a replacement plastic bumper that got scuffed up.

If it rains then all the animals come onto the road and drink from the puddles on the tar. The slower you go the less likely you'll hit something and the less damage it will do if you do hit something. I drive a little slower when there's tall scrub on the side of the road.

It's pot luck at the end of the day...i've driven tens of thousands of klms outback in both daylight and night time hours and never had an animal strike (had a few near misses though), yet the only roo I have hit was in the wife's Commodore in suburban Brisbane...go figure...lol.

If you are going fit something make sure that it is designed to do the job - a nudge bar won't do much at all.

The old 'animal strikes only occur at night' is a myth also - they can and do occur at anytime of the day.

After having a driving licence for nearly thirty years and only ever hit a few suicidal birds I had two major animal strikes in on the same day within 5 km of each other back on the WA June long weekend this year.

The first was a kangaroo which I hit doing about 60 kph about 3:30pm and it survived but the second was a cow which hit about 20 mins later at approx. 80 kph and unfortunately it was very badly hurt and had to be put down.

The only damage I had from both strikes was a dented number plate. I have a ARB commercial bull bar (steel) with side rails fitted to my Navara D40 and if I didn't have that I would have suffered a hell of a lot more damage.

No one can predict the future and just because something hasn't happened in the past - it doesn't mean that it isn't going to happen in the future.

Karl