Hitting a wombat is pretty much worse than hitting anything much smaller than a full grown & large water buffalo bull or a bull camel in his prime!! :yikes:
Cos they are so low but mainly solid muscle - they grow up to about 3ft long & almost 2ft wide/high & even the small wombats qualify as OMG for impact - they are virtually unstoppable if you get in their way when they want to go somewhere, and with teeth that put a beaver's to shame as well as pretty savage claws on the end of stumpy legs making them capable of ripping a wombat sized hole thru a concrete floor slab; they are often called "bush bull-dozers" (and a heap of far less flattering names too!)! Hitting one of them at speed in any vehicle short of an 18 wheeler almost certainly means the vehicle is going to be damaged & will usually mean a tilt tray ride home cos they tend to take out the front suspension and steering components, as well as sometimes the front diff, sump, radiator, and a bunch of other important stuff; and hitting one on a motorbike usually guarantees an ambulance ride for the rider and a trip to the junk yard for the bike!! Full grown wombats can make life pretty exciting & expensive if you do happen to hit one driving an 18 wheeler too!! It's like running into a solid 3ft by 2ft by 2ft block of concrete dumped in the middle of the road, only they move pretty quick for such a solid animal & they are a whole lot harder to dodge!!
Like Bob & Cavman said, they are pretty tuff, and hard on anything that runs into them; the only saving grace is that there are fewer of them around than there are kangaroos, and while kangaroos tend to come in to the road-sides at dawn & dusk to eat the tender grass shoots on the verge, going over fences to get there, but wombats prefer to dig holes all over the place & go straight thru fences, doing a lot of damage as they do. The schoolkids around here have a saying:
"A Wombat is a marsupial that eats roots, shoots, and leaves" but it should really read
"A Wombat is a marsupial that digs, eats roots, shoots, and leaves"!! (You gotta watch where you put the comma's on either saying tho.... put one in the wrong place and it can change the whole meaning.... still true, but not appropriate for schoolkids! :shocked
The holes & tunnels they dig are usually pretty big & extensive, and are sometimes even in the middle of hard packed dirt tracks, and that means if you come round a bend in the track and find one of these dirty great holes in front of you, you can easily drop a wheel or two into it and tear the wheels off the vehicle if you don't manage to miss - and the holes can be big enough to be damned hard to miss! They have also been known to dig holes under house foundations that have resulted in the house being condemned, and in some instances, houses and sheds have even collapsed into the holes these things have dug underneath them!!
As babies, they can look cute but will still flatten you if you get in between them and where they want to be; but once they are grown up, you tangle with them at your own risk & usually cost too, even if you are on a bike or in a vehicle! And even with the Wombat Bar, they can still make a mess of a Spyder! The way that other 'Bush Guard' is mounted might keep the grass, small scrub, & little animals like Wallabies or Kangaroos off the frunk, but it would almost certainly mean both your Spyder's front wheels would be ripped off if you hit a Wombat!
