Straight Talk Law Blog: A Bone of Contention With Dog Owners By Seattle Personal Injury Lawyer Jason Epstein

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As a car accident lawyer who practices in Seattle, it’s difficult sometimes to deal with the senselessness of some of the personal injury and wrongful death cases. In most cases, these are tragedies that could have easily been avoided.

That’s why I’ve put a lot of time and effort in attempting to prevent distracted driving, a practice that results in thousands and thousands of car accidents every year. I even began a website this past January, www.TeensAgainstDistractedDriving.com, where teenagers can take the pledge not to text and drive.

Well, it turns out I should have been targeting not just two-legged creatures, but also four-legged ones. My new article, “Man’s Best Friend – A Driver’s Worst Enemy?” discusses the results of a new AAA study showing that dog-owners are frequently – and dangerously – distracted by their pets while driving. Almost 60% of the dog owners surveyed said they had done something for their pets, such as feeding or petting them, that took their eyes off the road.

It actually doesn’t make sense when you take a minute to think about it: we make sure we’re buckled up (and, of course, our kids too), but we let our overactive pooches pounce from one seat to another – and even lay in our laps when we’re behind the wheel. What’s really scary is when you’re sometimes driving behind a pick-up truck – and you see a big dog prowling around the bed looking at you like he wants to jump right off that truck and through your windshield.

Since dogs are as big a part of any family as Mom or Dad in most families, we really should treat them like any other family member – and sensibly restrain them while riding with us to avoid the possibility of a car accident.

If you need a good reason, listen to this: according to the AAA, an unrestrained 10-pound dog in a crash at 50 mph will exert roughly 500 pounds of pressure, while an unrestrained 80-pound dog in a crash at only 30 mph will exert 2,400 pounds of pressure.

I don’t know about you, but those are some numbers I really never want to see in action.

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