Crash tests for pets show how to keep your dogs safe on car journeys

Like most pet owners I know, I put a considerable amount of thought and time into keeping my beagle, Hammy, safe in the car, whether it’s a longer drive or just a short trip across town. At the very least, most of us know not to drive with an animal loose in the back of a pick-up truck or in a carrier on the roof; and we know that a dog on the driver's lap is a recipe for disaster. But in an accident, would Hammy be as well protected as I am in my seat belt? Probably not.

Until now, consumers have had very little information about which products are most reliable at keeping dogs and cats safe in the car. With the completion of recent crash tests by the Centre for Pet Safety (CPS) and its forthcoming safety product standards, the non-profit research organisation – not affiliated with the pet product industry – is, thankfully, shedding some light on the safest ways to restrain four-legged passengers.

Lindsey Wolko, a management consultant, founded CPS in 2011, inspired by an injured dog and a car safety harness that she said did nothing to keep her dog safe. After the incident, she realised the only way to know for sure which products worked was to put them through rigorous testing. She began testing harnesses at a crash-test facility, simulating a front-end collision. One harness broke at the connection point. Another, which the manufacturer claimed to have crash-tested, decapitated the artificial test dog.

“It's important for pet owners to understand that there is a performance component when you shop for a product,” says Wolko, who runs CPS on a volunteer basis. “If you're looking for something that will provide protection in a crash, most of the products won't do that.”

Wolko called the pet industry “a big cloudy mess of marketing” in which manufacturers make ungrounded claims about safety. “But what pet owners don’t know is that the industry is highly unregulated,” she says. “Manufacturers can claim anything they want with no oversight. They can openly claim that they crash-tested it even if it fails the test miserably.”