I'm all for this. Dogs are a bigger distraction than cell phones. People with dogs running loose in their cars are saying "FU - i don't care if i crash into your car and kill you and your family."
Bill would keep dogs safer in cars, no ears flapping in the wind Thursday, October 06, 2005
By Linda Wilson Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Rep. Tom Stevenson, R-Mt. Lebanon, has introduced a bill that would require dogs and other pets to be buckled up or battened down in pet seat belts or in crates.
It would be illegal for an animal to put its head or even its nose out the window of a moving motorized vehicle.
"The General buttembly finds that pets riding in automobiles have caused distraction to drivers" which "sometimes results in automobile accidents and injury," says the opening paragraph of House Bill 1737.
"We've had a lot of response and most of it is negative," said Nancy Makowski, Mr. Stevenson's legislative buttistant. "Some say this is the only joy a dog has."
Many concerns come from owners of big dogs. They don't all own vans and SUVs, and crates for big dogs won't fit into regular cars.
Members of dog clubs "are ballistic about this," said Lawrence J. Gerson, a Point Breeze veterinarian who is on the legislative committee of the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical buttociation. "They feel it infringes on their rights."
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