The election earlier this month settled a lot of the state’s big issues, like who will sit in the governor’s office, but there are plenty of little problems that were left for another day.
One of them is whether Colorado should join a handful of other states and prohibit pickup owners from plying the state’s major highways with one or several dogs loose in the truck bed.
Colorado is a big state with lots of open road. Anyone who has traveled those roads will have seen a truck owner speeding down the highway with his pet or pets running from side to side in the open bed, seemingly inches from certain disaster.
There is, alas, more than the prospect of disaster. According to one estimate, 100,000 dogs are killed each year by either falling out of or being intentionally tossed out of careening pickup trucks.
Some states – including Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Oregon – have passed legislation regulating the practice. Some localities and counties also have local ordinances on the subject.
In all of these locations, proponents advanced arguments dealing with public as well as animal safety.
A frolicking dog in the back of a pickup is an obvious distraction and hazard, not only for the truck owner and the dog but for anybody else on or near that road or highway.
As to animal safety, as far back as 1988, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did a study in Massachusetts that was based on interviews with 141 veterinarians. The organization found that those vets had treated 592 dogs that year for injuries received when tossed from the bed of a pickup.
The Humane Society, in an article titled “Why Dogs and Pickup Trucks Don’t Mix,” stated the obvious quite nicely: “If your truck hits a bump, or if you step on the brakes suddenly or swerve to avoid an obstacle, your dog can easily be thrown from the truck bed and onto the road. Chances are, this will injure or kill your dog. But even if it doesn’t, being struck by another vehicle probably will. Also, other drivers may cause an accident by swerving to avoid hitting your dog.”
The question remains whether the plainly unwise practice of transporting loose dogs in pickup beds should be regulated. Would such a law, for example, interfere with the rights of farmers, ranchers, hunters and others who might have a reason to transport dogs in this fashion? Well, the handful of states that have addressed that concern have carved out narrow exceptions to cover those situations.
Oregon, for example, has an exception for ranching and farming which is limited to non-interstate highways and population centers with less than 5,000 people.
In Tennessee, where a bill was considered and later defeated, the measure had a narrow exception for licensed hunters. In Texas, where there has been a petition drive urging the legislature to act, a proposed law has exceptions for hunters and ranchers. These exceptions haven’t satisfied everyone. During the Tennessee debate, one lawmaker complained that the proposed statute would “absolutely destroy the way people live with these animals.”
Hysteria aside, there are good arguments to be made in favor of a state statute requiring the use of carriers or restraints:
The current system doesn’t work. While many dogs can survive a ride in the back of a pickup, many will not.
Public education doesn’t seem to be a good option. The typical pickup/dog owner surely knows the risks but has chosen to ignore them. More education is unlikely to change that fact.
Enforcement of a statute would be a breeze. The dog is typically in plain sight. A safety officer need not listen to the kind of stories offered when someone is stopped for speeding or a seat belt violation. It would be hard for a driver to claim the officer was mistaken and that “the dog wasn’t really in the bed of the pickup in the first place.”
If one of the new legislators in Colorado wants to take on the task of passing such a law, next year would be a good time to start.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
