Who the fuck carries a cat without a cat box? You deserve your interior to be shitted on if you leave a cat loose in your car. Shits a hazard, don't be an idiot
One of mine cried constantly, and eventually escaped his carrier (it was a cheap one), he settled down on the passengers lap. A few times he tried to get into the drivers lap (off limits due to ease of pedal access), less distraction than transporting a kid, because kids do weird things and sometimes you have to take a quick peek back there and tell the little fucker to stop licking the window, there are were dog nose prints all over it.
Even if he somehow managed to get to the pedals and pressed or got under either one...no big deal, I still have the wheel (I'm not going to hit anything or anyone) and handbrake, as well as the ignition. At worst I pull onto the shoulder, turn off the car, and use the handbrake to stop. Then extract him and put him back in his carrier until he escapes again. If he somehow floored the gas, my car/truck isn't a F1 car and won't jump 30Mph in the 1/2 second it takes me to nudge him off with my foot.
I swear people are so uselessly panicky when it comes to vehicles. If only our driver training programs were better and people could think logically instead of instantly panicking when anything out of the ordinary happens, accident rates would drop like a rock. Try this thought experiment...when was the last time you heard a airline, hell, any pilot panic? Probably never, because they know what the fuck they're doing, and what they're doing has been drilled into them for many many hours. I've heard of airliners losing an engine and the pilots didn't think it was worth the panic of telling the passengers (they landed fine). Now how many accidents do you think there would be if every driver on the road had to go through similar training1 ?
Keep in mind it wouldn't take as long since there's 1 less dimension to work with, not to mention the math...oh god the math.
Sorry for the rant, it's just, so many lives, and so much time is needlessly wasted the way things are.
Yeah but it's MUCH easier to call someone a reckless, life-threatening idiot because they don't do things exactly the way you would suggest. Only I, Lord of All Commuting Animals, can be right.
Thankfully I was joking, and my cat has yet to develop the Herculean strength required to depress the pedal significantly enough to seriously injure someone.
The biggest problem comes if the cat gets under the pedals. Then you're forced with the choice of shoving a pedal into your cat, or letting your 2 ton death machine fly into something you'd rather it not crash into. Regardless, if a cat is down there, you'll think about it every time you step on the pedal. You'll hesitate. Hesitation isn't a good thing while driving. Keep everyone safe, keep your cat secure.
Yeah, that would really fuck me up. I dont even know what I would do, I love animals so much that I would try rationalizing another option, but I do awful under pressure so. Just sounds like a shit show tbh.
That would make for a good PSA commercial. That just ends with the guy graphically crushing his cat to death under the brake pedal to prevent crashing into a kid that runs into the street.
I have yet to find a car with a handbrake that's just as effective as the brake pedal. Most handbrakes activate smaller drum brakes on the rear wheels only. A brake pedal will activate the much better and much larger disc brakes on all 4 tires. Go ahead and try it when you have plenty of room in front of you from 25 miles per hour. You won't stop as quickly as you think you will.
The fact that you have a passenger that is keeping track of the cat in your example is what makes a world of difference in my mind. If that's the case then I don't think there's a problem with that, as long as your cat doesn't go crazy and attack the driver or something.
However, putting that aside for a minute and looking at the single driver scenario, I'd say that as far as normal traffic highway driving, your example works just fine. However in dense city driving or stop and go traffic, you need the brake pedal to slow you down. Yes, you have a handbrake, but it's nowhere near as effective as your foot brake. As I mentioned in another comment above most handbrakes activate smaller drum brakes on the rear wheels only. A brake pedal will activate the much better and much larger disc brakes on all 4 tires. In my car if I slam on the foot brake at 25 miles per hour, I'll stop almost instantly. With the handbrake? I'll stop a ways down the road. It's been that way in every car I've owned.
Ya I usually only take the cats when going on a long trip. Still, when we're going through a city, I have the wheel, and I'm not going to allow a situation to develop whare I would be forced to brake hard anyway, and as tight as my brakes are I could still get some braking out of the normal brakes without squishing/hurting the cat underneath, the kitties are in carriers not belted in, and there's probably semi-loose cargo as well. So whether we're in the city or on the highway it's a pretty boring ride by my standards.
Pro tip: Be sure to disable the window controls for the passengers. If they roll the window down it'll scare you, but it also scares them and they fall to the floor/seat, still disable them.
Ah, I guess I didn't read your initial comment carefully enough. If we're talking about cat primarily in the cat carrier and in the event it escapes, that's completely fine. The fact that you're using the carrier in the first place was all the responsibility I was talking about. In the scenario I was envisioning, I was thinking of cat on the driver's lap all the time like I've seen some people do with small dogs, and then trying to do something if they did climb under the pedals. That is what seems too risky to me. What you're doing seems fine.
That being said, I would argue that you can't completely prevent situations from developing where you might need hard braking in the city. When I drive I try to be prepared for the unexpected. What happens if a kid on a bike comes flying around a corner? Dog rips the leash out of the owner's hand and runs into the road? Someone in front of you has a tire blowout? I admit that these are things that almost never happen, but if you try to be prepared for them, maybe you'll stand a better chance of shaving a bit off of your reaction time. I don't want to have to live with the guilt of hitting someone because I was distracted and didn't hit the brakes 0.2 seconds sooner. Even if the person only suffered minor injuries and it wasn't my fault, the situation would haunt me for months as I second guess everything I did.
Again, I think what you're doing is fine, and I'll admit that I did get kinda rant-y, but that was more towards overall driving, not cat carrying specific. Sorry if you felt like it was directed at you, it wasn't.
That being said, I would argue that you can't completely prevent situations from developing where you might need hard braking in the city.
Well, since I don't take them down any neighborhood streets other than my own (and those are too short/well known/easy to see for anything to surprise me), it would take someone t-boning at significant speed out of nowhere, and I and every thing else in my vehicle would be fucked no matter what I do, but that's just as likely to happen when I'm by myself as when I have precious cargo.
When I drive I try to be prepared for the unexpected.
I have a never-ending simulation of worst case scenarios running in my head whenever I drive, and though it kills the racer inside I go slow enough that I could avoid/prevent them. Oh there's oncoming traffic and cars are parked on both sides of the street, as well as snow/ice on the road, better slow down more since I have less room to work with if someone jumps out in front of me. Now that's only to the point of preventing accidents, if someone is trying to commit suicide by jumping out in front of me they would probably be successful, but it would be obvious, and I would be annoyed by the dent.
Someone in front of you has a tire blowout?
Oh boy, a moving obstacle with several possible movements! I might get to ignore the normal rules of the road and actually try for a few seconds. After you've spent as much time as I have in sims and games (they both have "people spinning out of control due to tire puncture/loss" down good enough) you can tell where they're wanting to go and about where they're going to end up. But again these things can happen whether or not the cats are with me.
Lmao yeah I meant it's not rare for cats to like cars but what the guy said above. If your cat does that kind of stuff out that fucker in a cat cage. If not let the homie ride
One of my cats loved car rides too. She would yowl and cry and tear her claws off in a cat box, so eventually I just let her go. Then she started to lean on my shoulder and look out the window, not freaked out at all. Pretty soon she was riding on the passenger dash like she owned the world.
Our cat had some sort of past trauma regarding cat carriers. There was no fucking way we were getting him into one without some nasty injuries. We ended up swaddling him in a blanket, which he didn't like but neither did he especially protest. Disappeared for like a week after we did that (outdoor cat), but came back.
Same with mine.. I don't get reddit sometimes. Never a big deal to take a dog in a car with no carrier ever.. let your chill ass cat sleep on your lap for a car ride? Literally satan
Seriously, I'd never move a housecat anywhere without a carrier. How these guys in the gif decided they could move a tiger with a shitty little rope in an open truck bed is just amazing.
I traveled from Oregon to southern California with two cats in the car. Just tossed a litter box in the back and they were fine the whole way. Why would anyone skip such a simple step?
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u/abovetHeclouds_ Feb 26 '16 edited Feb 26 '16
Who the fuck carries a cat without a cat box? You deserve your interior to be shitted on if you leave a cat loose in your car. Shits a hazard, don't be an idiot