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barstoolguru wrote:WOW, who would have figured dogs doing this? Thank god they don't have a goldfish restraint law !

While the exact numbers are not available, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people are injured in car accidents by unrestrained dogs. We all know of the dangers of texting or using the phone while driving, but being distracted by a pet free in the car has now been added to the list of distracted driving activities. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, almost 5,500 were killed in accidents caused by distracted driving in 2009. So far, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association does not have a specific category that identifies accidents caused by drivers distracted by pets; however, the statistic is housed in categories like distracted passengers.

Dog in cars contributing to car accidents
http://www.pennsylvaniaaccidentinjuryla ... ents.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and by the way everyone knows why the chicken crossed the road.... to show the amadillo it could be done

Are you joking with this? You're quoting an unsubstantiated assertion by a personal injury attorney? Seriously? It says this in your own quotation: the NHTSA "does not have a specific category that identifies accidents caused by drivers distracted by pets," so the the "tens of thousands" and "5,500" numbers are completely bogus. Here's what it says in the LA Times article the attorney links to:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleash ... afety.html

This is meaningless hype from a self-interest group, not a statistic. The article says this:

Tens of thousands of car accidents are believed caused every year by unrestrained pets, though no one has solid numbers.

I can "believe" the moon is made of green cheese, that doesn't make it true. Not one scintilla of evidence is provided to support this dubious claim. All that is provided in support are anecdotal claims by people who caused an accident and have an incentive to place the blame on some factor other than their driving. Laws should be based on fact and reality, not "belief."

Cellphones were the top distraction -- the cause of 18 percent of the fatalities and 5 percent of the injury crashes. The agency does not track accidents caused by pets, but said they are counted among other distractions such as disruptive passengers, misbehaving children or drivers who attempt to put on makeup or read.

The claim then is that the TOP distraction --cell phones-- "caused" 18% of the fatalities. Since the article is trying to claim loose pets cause accidents, if there was any evidence at all that this was the case, and anywhere close to the claim about cell phones, some percentage for loose pets would be provided. "Caused" is merely someone's assertion --no evidence is given to support the assertion, and no methodology for determining "cause" is given, so there is absolutely no reason even to believe the claim that 18% of fatalities are "caused" by cell phone distraction (and as much as it aggravates me to see people driving with cell phones glued to their ears, I don't believe the claim the article makes).

IOW, your claim that "exact" numbers aren't available misrepresents the reality, which is that there is NO DATA AT ALL on the number of accidents caused by unrestrained pets.

And finally, the laws the article talks about being passed regarding pets are for pets on the driver's lap.....not nearly so odious as the law discussed here.

barstoolguru wrote:"If I have an accident and die because I wasn't wearing a seat belt that's MY problem, not the government's. Courts serve a constitutional and proper role of government; telling me what's good for ME, and requiring me to do things by law that the government thinks are good for ME, is an improper and unconstitutional role of government."

If you want to kill yourself I have no problem with that but when you do it puts a strain on the system because someone (obviously not you) is going to have to clean up the mess. the problem here is when someone has a loose animal in the car distracting them they create a road hazard which affected everyone including the government because when you crash they/we have to clean up the mess and that makes it everyone’s problem. So we can say that the government has a right to protect the population by making a law for the good of everyone. Remember if people were not so self-centered and though past the nose on their face we would not have so many laws to start with

All I can say to that is: you're a scary guy with a scary attitude.That logic justifies everything a government might want to do. With it, there is no limit to government except the good will of those administering it. The founders knew where that kind of thinking leads --tyranny-- so they attempted to place limits on our government.

Sorry, but the US is supposed to be a Constitutional Republic with a Constitution that grants rights to individuals, not groups. There is no such thing as a law "for the good of everyone," so the default is always the "greater good." That, my friend, is the essence of collectivism: the greatest good for the greatest number; and the opposite of the type of government created by our founders. It's exactly the kind of logic that leads to governments killing a few million people in the name of benefiting the majority.

barstoolguru wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

barstoolguru wrote:Laws to control bad driving and leaving fines have been going on for nearly a 100 years.

And bad driving is still uncontrolled, with fewer fatalities primarily a result of improved technology....better cars, seat-belts, and air bags.

barstoolguru wrote:What you and other anti-government people see as a bad law I see as a law that just might save a life and who knows it might be yours!

What do you consider an "anti-government" person? I highly doubt ANYONE on this board is "anti-government." I'm not anti-government, I just want the government to do that, and ONLY that, authorized in the US Constitution. The people on here complaining about government are complaining about the government as it now exists: overbearing, intrusive, huge, corrupt, and unConstitutional.

The oft cited liberal nonsense that any law that MIGHT save a live is good can justify ANY government action, including murdering people, since a case can always be made that if the State kills 10,000 people it will save 10,001. It's a slogan used as a substitute for thought, not an argument.

barstoolguru wrote:"If I took my three-year-old son, and placed him unrestrained in the backseat of my car, this is what would happen: He’d be jumping all over the place. He’d definitely try and climb into the front seat. He’d probably attempt to take the wheel. He’d end up on my lap. He’d punch me in my nose. We’d probably crash and die and maybe take a few people with us."

Your child, or someone else's child, is YOUR problem, not mine; and I can assure you, that none of the behavior quoted above happened with either of my children when they were three years old. What you're quoting is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the child's parent --poor parenting. A law isn't going to fix that, and it will apply to those of us who are responsible parents, punishing us, while the irresponsible parents remain just as irresponsible.

Here’s the problem with your comment: you can't see the forest because there are too many trees in your way.

I agree with you that there are too many laws that restrict us. The constitution says a have a right to pursue happiness and to me that’s drinking and driving today but the law says I can’t. How dare them to make a law that infringes on my rights.

That burns me up and you are right if I run into someone else because I was drunk and cripple their kid that should be between me and them not the government. After all every person that drives is a responsible adult and has common sense

You're mixing apples and oranges. You're focused on the number of laws, and the right to pursue happiness.....I'm talking specifically about the part of the Constitution that says those powers not SPECIFICALLY enumerated to the Federal government belong to the states, or the people. That could be one or one million unconstitutional laws....doesn't matter a whit to me, because all of them are an overreach and unconstitutional. Furthermore, you seem to be confused about the application of the law. Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. To give a simple example, being drunk and killing someone as a result is appropriately against the law because it is conduct that clearly injures another party. If I have an accident and die because I wasn't wearing a seat belt that's MY problem, not the government's. Courts serve a constitutional and proper role of government; telling me what's good for ME, and requiring me to do things by law that the government thinks are good for ME, is an improper and unconstitutional role of government.

That's the fundamental principle, though it's not always so simple, and there is often room for disagreement about where one person's rights end and another person's rights begin. However, there are other approaches to writing law than simple fines and jail time for every possible action that might hypothetically result in the violation of another person's rights. Instead of fining people for having an unrestrained dog in their car you fine or jail them when an unsecured dog leads to negligent behavior that injures another person --which I suspect, in the scheme of things, RARELY happens. There is no fine for changing CD's in your car or talking to passengers either, but if a driver's inattention results in an accident that injures another party, he his responsible for that negligence, and appropriate consequences may be reasonable and necessary. This particular situation is a little more complicated because it involves dogs, not people. Dogs don't have the same legal rights as people, and for the most part, are considered property. Whether I agree or disagree with that isn't an issue, as this treatment is mostly settled law.

barstoolguru wrote:Laws to control bad driving and leaving fines have been going on for nearly a 100 years.

And bad driving is still uncontrolled, with fewer fatalities primarily a result of improved technology....better cars, seat-belts, and air bags.

barstoolguru wrote:What you and other anti-government people see as a bad law I see as a law that just might save a life and who knows it might be yours!

What do you consider an "anti-government" person? I highly doubt ANYONE on this board is "anti-government." I'm not anti-government, I just want the government to do that, and ONLY that, authorized in the US Constitution. The people on here complaining about government are complaining about the government as it now exists: overbearing, intrusive, huge, corrupt, and unConstitutional.

The oft cited liberal nonsense that any law that MIGHT save a live is good can justify ANY government action, including murdering people, since a case can always be made that if the State kills 10,000 people it will save 10,001. It's a slogan used as a substitute for thought, not an argument.

barstoolguru wrote:"If I took my three-year-old son, and placed him unrestrained in the backseat of my car, this is what would happen: He’d be jumping all over the place. He’d definitely try and climb into the front seat. He’d probably attempt to take the wheel. He’d end up on my lap. He’d punch me in my nose. We’d probably crash and die and maybe take a few people with us."

Your child, or someone else's child, is YOUR problem, not mine; and I can assure you, that none of the behavior quoted above happened with either of my children when they were three years old. What you're quoting is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the child's parent --poor parenting. A law isn't going to fix that, and it will apply to those of us who are responsible parents, punishing us, while the irresponsible parents remain just as irresponsible.

barstoolguru wrote:

canvasbck wrote:

barstoolguru wrote:We don't need more government intervention but you have to look at it this way too that there are a lot of people that drive with dogs in their laps or hanging on them. That makes a road hazard to the rest of us. The last thing I want to worry about is some blue hair having her little labra doddle clawing her already weak shaky arms and hands while she is plowing I-35 so little pookey can get his anal glands expressed.

For the people that drive around with a dog in the back of the truck. The man says I only seen one brought in to the vets office… well yea the rest were road pizza. They usually don’t make it and when they do fall out it makes a heck of a road bump and the people behind him are the ones that have to swerve to avoid the animal and that puts them in danger
So IF not for the safety of the animal maybe for the other people that share the road

Nor do I want to have to worry about the teenager who must answer her latest text because "OMG, bobby dumped Sally", Or the dude craining his neck to see the hot chick walking down the seawall plows into folks waiting at the stop light. But I don't want laws FORCING behaviors.

Sooooooooooo many liberties are lost when we start trying to pass laws just to protect people from their own or other people's stupidity. You do realize that (overall, not just traffic accidents) when people get hurt, 95% of the time it is because they did something themselves to cause the accident. Only about 4% of the time they get hurt from someone else doing something to them. The other 1%...........stuff just happened.

It’s a crying shame we need laws to regulate the population but they are needed because as the world gets more complicated it is needed or otherwise we would have a lawless sociality. Before the car was invented we had no need for laws regulating them then the first man was run over and then the laws to protect the citizen from the sloppy driver.

you mention the man rubbernecking a woman; there will never be a law to stop that because you can’t prove it. Texting...if it was never invented we wouldn't need a law to say you can't do it while driving. Common sense says it dangerous but yet 10 of thousands do it every day and cause accident and people get hurt. so yes there needs to be a law against it because people can't be trusted.

Same with dogs in cars... why should they not be strapped down... why? You have to have a seat belt, your kids have to have a child safety seat? But your dog can just run around the vehicle and be an obstruction while you are driving.
Your right it’s only a problem IF YOU get run over. If someone else gets hit because of their dog it’s OK because it’s not you.
REmember driving is a privilege and it’s not your constitutional right

Wow...there's so much wrong with this attitude I don't know where to start.

In the first place, no, more laws are not what's needed, individual responsibility is what's needed. Laws are more about punishment than prevention. You can't fix stupid with a law. Law's don't reduce complexity, they increase it. Furthermore, your complexity argument is false, pretty much across the board, and especially as it regards motor vehicles. Cars are much easier to operate now than they used to be. They may represent more complicated systems, but that complexity is irrelevant to the average person driving a car.

I also reject this "driving is a privilege" nonsense. If you'd been alive back when the Constitution was being written I suppose you have said "riding a horse is a privilege." That's the Statist baloney pitched in the public schools. I have a right to travel. The notion that my right to travel is limited to the distance I can walk is absurd. I absolutely have the right to drive my own car on my own property; and I submit that I also have a right to drive my own car on "public" roads that I've been FORCED to pay for. Yes, I realize that as a practical matter the Statist claptrap has prevailed but I'm speaking to a matter of principle. If the anti's prevail and succeed in banning guns it won't change the fact that I have a right to own guns and defend myself, though there will be practical consequences for doing so.

Your contention that there needs to be laws against everything because people can't be trusted not only almost leaves me speechless, but is downright scary. Philosophers have written books about this, and I'm not up for writing one myself, so I'll just quote a few of the past greats:

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Hence, the less government we have, the better,—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.

Winston Churchill:

If you have 10,000 regulations,you destroy all respect for law.

Martin Luther King:

We can never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”

William O Douglas:

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Thomas Bracket Reed:

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation

Thomas Jefferson:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Sowell:

When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, ‘there ought to be a law,’ you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.

Lao Tsu:

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

William F. Buckley:

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.

Tacitus:

The more corrupt the state, the more laws

.

But this quote from Cicero is probably the most succient summation:

The more laws, the less justice.

arod757 wrote:

VMI77 wrote:....but I can only respond to what is written.

Understood. Had to clarify. Comparing someone to Bloomberg... well, those are fighting words!

Yeah, that was probably going too far, and I apologize.

arod757 wrote:

VMI77 wrote:All you people who agree with this law...

I'm not sure anybody said they agreed with the actual law, just that it is a good idea to try to keep your dog restrained in a vehicle. I do, and that's my prerogative. But it's not my business if anyone else decides not to and I certainly don't believe anybody should be fined for it.

In your case, that may be true. You said:

I think the law is actually for restraining dogs inside vehicles, which I'm all for, simply for the safety of you and your pet, but I think is ridiculous as far as fines are concerned.

That can be read two ways: 1) that you're all for the law requiring dogs to be restrained in vehicles; or 2) that you're for restraining dogs in vehicles. Because you say later in the sentence that you think the law is ridiculous "as far as fines are concerned," it seems you're saying you're OK with the law, but you think the fines are too high.

However, when someone says, "I agree with having to restrain your dogs in the car," they're talking about compulsion, and hence, supporting the law requiring it. True, it could be bad wording, and maybe he meant people "should" restrain their dogs....which I submit is simply not possible in many cases....but I can only respond to what is written.

stealthfightrf17 wrote:I agree with having to restarin your dogs in the car. When my son was about 6 months old, my wife was reended by a lady trying to control her dog in her lap. Thankfully no one was hurt, but that could have been very diffrent.

All you people who agree with this law strike me as people who are just fine with laws that don't affect them or suit their particular political disposition. YOU think a dog should be restrained or not allowed in the back of a pickup, so you're fine with FORCING everyone else to do what you think is good. Sort of like Bloomberg --HE thinks people drink too much soda pop so he wants to make a law against serving sizes over 16 ounces. A lot of people think that's a good idea too, because they don't drink sodas, or because while THEY might drink a soda, THEY have the good judgement to limit their intake to what THEY deem to be a reasonable amount.

I don't think dogs should be chained, caged all day, or left outside all the time. It troubles me to see dogs that are just left by themselves in someone's yard....maybe there should be a law against that too? And while I cringe every time I see a dog in the back of a pickup truck I've never once thought, ya know, the government ought to make a law and force people not to let their dogs ride in the back of a pickup truck. I saw an old man in an old pickup truck in Refugio and he had at least six good sized dogs in the back of his pickup.......my thought was how this man must love dogs, not that the State should put a stop to him. He couldn't have traveled with those dogs in the cab, or in a car. He didn't look like he had a lot of money, but I'm willing to bet there were six dogs in his care that wouldn't otherwise have had a home. So, you want to prevent this man from traveling with his dogs or force him to buy a vehicle he can't afford?

Some dogs clearly LOVE to ride in the back of a pickup. Who am I to tell their owners they can't let their dogs ride that way.....or with their nose outside a rolled down window? And while I certainly don't want my dog flying around my vehicle and injured in a accident, someone is going to have to show me just HOW I am going to restrain my 170 lb Great Dane without injuring him or putting him in distress. My dog riding unrestrained in my vehicle is no threat to the public. If he was a lap dog he'd be no more of a threat to the public than someone talking on their cell phone, eating the hamburger they just picked up at the drive through, or changing CD's....should we prohibit every act inside a vehicle that could possibly divert the driver's attention....I've seen drivers turn around to talk to passengers in the back seat....so maybe we should prohibit conversations too.