I don’t necessarily disagree with your larger point, but your example isn’t very persuasive. Travelling with an unrestrained dog in a car is pretty reckless (and maybe illegal).

Between the driver distraction, and the fact that they become a deadly projectile in a crash (and of course the fact that even a fairly minor crash could kill the dog), It’s a really good idea to have some kind of car restraint for pets in the car. Buckle him in for real!

Apparently in Europe it's illegal to transport an unrestrained animal.

In the United States it's the opposite: totally legal to throw fido in the car and let them roam. Except in New Jersey. Go figure.

It should be illegal.

I totaled two cars that way one wet night - mine, and that of the idiot college-freshman-to-be who made an illegal left into the intersection a couple hundred feet in front of me, because of the kitten wandering around the cabin. (The kitten came through just fine.)

No it SHOULDn'T be illegal. You know whats wrong with the world? People naturally have freedoms in this world, and its only by giving them away subtractively that we are losing ourselves. Pretty soon you will vote to make it illegal to bite your nails because it might hurt you. I can hear you saying now "YEAH I AGREE WITH THAT BECAUSE PEOPLE GET HURT AND THIS WILL HELP THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL." Screw that attitude. I have a small dog and he is just fine and polite in the car. I can't put a seat belt on him but its abuse to have him in the apartment by himself so we go riding. And I don't tie him up. He isn't a danger. I could be in more DANGER from being careless and irresponsible with my driving and attention.

Its the same thing with gun laws. Stupid people kill people. Not the guns. You are taking away "guns" and emboldening people who already don't follow the law. Your idea to make a LAW to make it illegal to have an unrestrained dog in the vehicle is ineffective and naive. It doesn't do a thing and only adds to a growing chaotic twisted system of laws that are growing top-heavily. I think its disgusting that people have opinions that subtly destroy our country. Keep your opinion to yourself. Stop trying to hurt others freedoms because you had someone do something stupid and you want to blame it on an external factor that was irrelevent. People can have innumerable distractions besides a phone or a pet... and you're going to blame that when it pops up and call for it to be illegal next.

Disgusting behavior and pattern of thought.

Last time I checked, a few years ago, the rules where:

- A single pet unrestrained in the back seat, or in a harness in the passenger seat.

- Two or more pets: in individual cages, physically separated from the driver.

I'm breaking the law then: I put my dog in a harness in the back seat.

How do you put a seatbelt on a dog?

The dog wears a harness, and a strap clips into the buckle seat and onto the harness. When you get where you're going, you unclip the strap from the harness, clip on the leash, and off you go.

Weird, I've lived with dogs my whole life but have never heard of anyone doing that. Must be cultural.

Dog harnesses that attach to seat belts are sold at most pet supply stores in the US. There are also short leash like tethers they connect to seat belts and hook to a typical walking harness.

You kennel the dog and tie down the kennel to metal D rings that are attached to the vehicle. Now you know how to safely transport a dog!

https://gunner.com/blogs/pack/why-should-i-tie-down-my-dog-c...

There are also various harnesses that attach to seatbelts for non-kennel transportation.

https://www.chewy.com/b/car-safety-11554

Have you ever been in a car with a dog?

if you can't handle the fact that dogs are a pain in the ass, you weren't ready for a dog

This was me when we got our dog, but I'm used to it now. I'm now thankful for the lesson. They say you don't get the dog you want, but the dog you need: I needed the kick up the arse to get my shit together enough that I can take care of another being while still managing my own responsibilities.

Agree with this. It's a much better argument that your bag of groceries or backpack on the seat is setting of the occupancy sensor. Except that happens in my 2008 Mitsubishi - a far from modern car.

I have heard maybe some modern cars have better occupancy sensors based on something better than weight but I'd expect a dog to set of most sensors designed to detect a human :)

I also wonder if the radio is disabled primarily because a lot of modern cars seem to use the radio speakers as the chime - not sure if the F150 does this - but also even if the chime was separate I guess if the radio was too loud you wouldn't be able to hear it.

> pretty reckless

I'm sympathetic to wanting to protect pups, but to take something commonplace and label it "pretty reckless" is not the right way to convince people. I suspect a lot of ills in society can probably be traced to people filtering out the chorus of well-meaning "here's yet another thing you're doing wrong" they get every day, and thereby missing the important stuff.

An example that has stuck with me, from 2019, about the environmental unsoundness of gardening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20838072

On one hand, I agree with you in the general sense

On the other, I think at this point both sides of the specific "should dogs be restrained in cars" wars are pretty sizeable.

Some people feel like it's the nanny state encroaching on their rights, others understand how a 20 mph crash could grievously injure our dogs, and that taking 30 seconds* to secure them can be a huge difference.

* some people paint it as a huge hassle, but my 75 lb Greyhound is as nervous and training-resistant as dogs get and had no problem learning being still enough to slip into his harness before we get moving

Your car should not be responsible for enforcing the law.

That’s the point.

It's enforcing the law it's preventing tangible harm from occurring. There are people that disliked seatbelts and their restrictions at first too.

Taken to its ultimate conclusion we’ll end up living in pods like Wall-E. God forbid people experience danger or risk in any aspect of their lives.

"Turn off the radio when someone is unbuckled" is not an excessive or unusual precaution. Don't be so dramatic and hysterical.

It's very unusual!

Deactivating the radio does not prevent harm. Rather, it’s a penalty. But, if you enjoy being punished by an inanimate object, knock yourself out. For all I know, you find it erotic to be bossed around by ‘your’ vehicle. Whatever gets you off. More power to you. I’m sure there is a market for folks who would enjoy having electric nipple clamps shock them when they forget to use their turn signal. To each their own.

What tangible harm did turning off the radio prevent in OP's case?

I'm not passing judgement on the radio turning off, I'm just saying: calling out leaving a dog unrestrained as "pretty reckless" isn't that off base.

Some people will browbeat you over topics that they personally don't care that much about, just so they can feel good about themselves: I agree with that. But I think people tend to really do feel pretty strongly about the unrestrained dog thing.

At the end of the day it's your life, your dog, we all take risks, etc. etc. but it's still an uneasy thing to think about how it can go wrong

I dunno. Where I grew up, it was commonplace for kids to ride in the bed of a pickup truck, with or without a topper - my best friend and I rode with his dad that way on a six-hour road trip to the next state over, and on the six-hour trip back. Absent a genuine miracle, any collision at highway speeds would've killed the both of us outright. But no one involved thought anything of it, because that was just what you did.

I'm sympathetic to the distaste for scolds robotic and otherwise, but on the other hand, sometimes the scolds are right.

I think the key is that when you're designing a scold, you should ask whether a user circumventing the scold is going to be more dangerous than an unscolded user.

I'm reminded of a prior employer who didn't want us doing nontrivial networking at our desks, so they used STP traffic as a sort of canary. If you plugged in a switch that was smart enough to be running STP, your port would be disabled for 30 minutes.

So of course, we puzzled it out with wireshark, disabled STP, and created a monster by running network cables over the cube partitions. Sometime later we accidentally brought the network to its knees with the fallout of a switching loop (which is what STP prevents).

As a policy, it was like if you needed to pass a breathalyzer in order to put on your seatbelt.

At first I thought you were referring to shielded twisted pair cables for Ethernet, then I realized you were talking about the spanning tree protocol for switches.

The point is not that [bad thing] isn't bad. It's that scolding is the wrong way to go about it. How would your friend's dad have reacted to a stranger at the gas station yelling at him about the kids in the bed?

A better approach is friendliness, and gently pointing out how dangerous it is. "Hey man - careful with those kids. My neighbor died that way growing up - might be worth pulling them into the cab" is more likely to get a "Really? Dang, yea, you're right"

Spoken like a man who never met Douglas Haynes, but I take your point nonetheless.

It's not just about protecting the dog, but also about protecting people from flying dogs. That said, it's not realistic to require that dogs be restrained in motor vehicles.

What..? I have literally never seen a restrained dog in a car

Guessing its not much of a 'thing' in the US but in the UK you have a harness that goes around the dog onto a stiff bungee type cord. It plugs into the seatbelt and allows them to move around on the seat but stops them being launched through the window if you have a crash.

I'm not sure why anyone would be against protecting their pet like some of the other comments here though. Can't work out if its stupidity or ignorance.

> Travelling with an unrestrained dog in a car is pretty reckless (and maybe illegal).

There's pro's and con's for this.

Firstly the dog could be in the front passenger seat in a harness and restrained which doesnt use the seatbelts, so the pressure sensor in the seat/base of the chair that detects weight, and a seat belt clip not inserted into the seat belt harness could trigger these cars's safety systems.

Considering some cars can also let you switch off the passenger airbag and these are generally on by default with the manual override switch located in a variety of places, it might be simpler to have these options and questions built into these OLED displays which the driver has to run through, much like a pilot running through a series of checks before take off.

> Travelling with an unrestrained dog in a car is pretty reckless (and maybe illegal). When dogs (and cats) are unrestrained, whilst illegal in many countries, in vehicle crashes, their faster reaction times which is faster than snakes hence why they were domesticated, mean they more often than not escape unharmed.

As to being a projectile, again generally not if they are laying down inside the vehicle, but when they have their heads out of windows for Youtube views, the risk is increased.

However if projectile risk is an issue, why dont people use cargo netting to strap down their mobile phones, laptops, briefcases, handbags inside a vehicle when on the daily commute?

Yout cant film inside a car using Go Pro's on a race track unless the camera is attached to a surface like the inside of the windscreen with two suction pads.

Yet ironically, if you are a proper VIP being chauffeured around, you'll often get told not to wear your seatbelt as these can restrain you in place in the event of an attack and the bodyguards like to get you out of the vehicle quickly... Although I see that as a mixed message considering only the bodyguard was wearing a seatbelt when Princess Diana and Dodi died in their car crash and according to someone friends with the bodyguard, MI6 told him to get them to take the route that night which was different to their normal route. Stranger Things!

Good luck getting dog owners to restrain dogs in motor vehicles. That generally means putting them in a cage, and a) that is not something most dogs appreciate, b) for many dog owners that would mean upgrading to a larger vehicle.

We can't make everything perfectly safe.

I just want to say I disagree and think this is brainwashed thinking. You could crash into a pole... make sure all poles have car guards! It's a really good idea to have some sort of guard rail around every single thing that could be hit by a car. Why don't the trash cans have car-guard rails? Just in case someone is gonna crash in them.

Make sure you take all cell phones from anyone entering a vehicle. Wouldn't want the phone to start ringing unexepectantly and cause a car crash!!! Don't forget to follow all laws. Wouldn't want to be illegal. In Tennessee, it is illegal to share your Netflix password with others. Better report yourself to the authorities. How reckless!

What happens to an unseatbelted dog in an accident at 75 MPH?

(That’s rhetorical. I know the answer as I stopped to assist someone who had an accident on I-95. He wouldn’t let the paramedics take him to the hospital until after they retrieved the dog’s body.)

Or spots something in the next car over that he'd like to jump after.

Its an equally valid question to ask what would happen to a seatbelted dog at 75mph. The answer is probably pretty similar; they're made for human bodies, not canine.

That's why you get a harness designed specifically for this.

Consumer Reports has test results. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/keep-pets-safe-in...

Only if you didn't use a harness like you should

Which is why dog harnesses exist for cars - not really rocket science.

Trick question. It doesn't happen because the driver was watching the road and knew not to blame the pet for a hypothetical crash you just created in your head to prove a point that was MOOT. You want people to have a law that forces them to do something, even though no one is harmed with the care that goes into driving.

I'm sick of people like this using emotional justifications to explain why they need to force more laws down humans throats. Just DRIVE SMART. You don't need to eternally increase laws. They don't work. You have good intentions but you're only betraying all humans for federal top heavy legistlature that only grows. Stop bro. How many things are dangerous in this world? Jumping off your house is dangerous... but that doesn't mean we need to enact a law that forces people to never be able to step on their roof. Fucking get real.

Its the same as guns. Taking them away seems good TO YOU. But it doesn't effectively save anyone, as criminals will get guns either way through their ruthlessness... while innocent civiliians will have theirs taken away. You fundamentally misunderstand the situation. A dog in a car will be going at an average of 36 miles an hour. What happens when you stop in a car? The dog goes forward fast. So does anything else in the car... like a drink.

I'm going to give you a law that says you must have all of your drinks seatbelted in... if you don't have them seatbelted in they could cause an accident! Don't forget to seatbelt your seatbelt... at 75 MPH, that seatbelt might whip around if its not held down safely.... but what about that seatbelt... sounds too dangerous... I would just stay home, mcculley... <Make sure you seatbelt yourself and wear your helmet on your couch, you might fall and hit your head. Lets make it illegal to not have a helmet in your home.

Get a helmet for your dog too... bumping your head hurts and can be dangerous.

I never said there should be a law. You should argue with someone who wrote that. Also, try decaf.

That pooch better not stick his head out the window. I bet that's an upcoming feature.

No chance of pulling over 'to "buckle" him in'?

Cool story, but what does it have to do with this article?

Amazing. All the vehicles I’ve seen recently make it a priority that you are never without some kind of entertainment-system racket. Unplugged the iPhone by mistake, or maybe forgot to connect it before driving off? Bluetooth dropped? Better get ready to BLAST THE RADIO! And when you do connect, it’s important to start up some kind of music, even if that’s just “alphabetically first in the library”.

Silence, how utterly unthinkable.

I complain about my 2016 Altima and its overcomplicated, finicky CVT that's started to slip - but from all I hear of cars made since then, I think I'm just gonna keep it on the road until it dies or I do. At least when I want it to be quiet, it's quiet, and it doesn't make noise again till I say.

Whatever committee decided "autoplay music on connect" should be the default setting should never be allowed anywhere near software development.

Has ford considered taking this a bit further - in between your songs they pause the music and make you repeat "It's Always Fresh in the Outback!" or "Subway, eat fresh!" a few times to refill your ford points to re-enable the radio. The more volume -> more points used per minute. If they detect you let your dog ride without strapping it into a ford approved dog cage then it will report you to the local police and self-drive you to the police station. Imagine if we integrated a covid testing application and an automated system to detect slurs during bouts of heavy traffic and immediately reports your bad words to twitter and your covid test result directly to the CDC. Oh and a perhaps they could integrate a giant screen that shows a picture of a small animal dying from being submerged in an oil spill to shame you for buying their product, the more you drive the cuter and more dead animals that could appear on the dash.