The UK did have a dog license at one stage... Dunno why they got rid of it, really.
Probably because it is near impossible to police, and the cost of implementing an effective policing system would be prohibitive.
Boils down to money at the end of the day. Not enough people are being mauled or killed by dogs for the government to do something about it. Of course that is little consolation to those who have been mauled, or to the families of those who have been killed by dogs over the years.
A driver isn't *supposed* to, no... A driver is never supposed to speed ever... 17 million of them in 2013 still did, though.
What sound judgement they had, eh!!
Yes, and a lot of those speeding wont have caused an accident or injury. Just like a lot of the dogs being let off the lead will not. The point being, though, that there has to be standard of best practice. The policy of speed limits is about limiting the
potential harm caused by speeding drivers. It is not to say everyone that speeds will cause harm, in the same way as not every dog off the lead
will cause harm. But the risk has to be mitigated and best practice implemented on the
potential for harm.
It is why we are not supposed to drink and drive. It is why we are not supposed to speed, particulalry outside of schools or in built up areas. It is why we are supposed to put our lights on in the dark and why we are supposed to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front. It is why we have a minimum tread depth on the tyres and we have to have an MOT (where applicable). All of these are elements of best practice to mitigate potential risk.
In 2012, there were 195,723 casualties on Britains roads. At the end of 2012 there were 34.5m vehicles on our roads. That is an approximate casualty rate of 0.56% of vehicles on the road. Your 17 million speeders figure is a little misleading because it does not account for multiple offenders.
Now lets look at dogs. It is a little more approximated as dog ownership is not really registered like vehicles are. It is hard to find hard data, and I couldnt find anything from the ONS, so bear with me on these figures.
Circa 8.5 million dogs in 2013. Circa 200,000 people a year injured by dogs (around 6000 of which are serious enough for hospital admission). That is a casualty rate of 2.4% of dogs owned.
So, if you want to look at it statistically, you have a higher chance of being injured by a dog in this country than you do by a car even though the number of dogs is only 25% of the number of cars.
But equally, humans are supposed to recognise antagonising/threatening/upsetting animals is generally a stupid thing to do... yet a surprising number of those occasions where it turns out bad gets blamed on the dog/owner instead of the kid that was throwing stones at it, or whatever.
Kids running into the road is also stupid, as are kids playing chicken. But as a society we accept that kids are not mature enough to fully assess the risks involved with their actions and we have to take responsibility for them. As a car driver that may be in the form of slowing down when you see children on the pavement, or when you are driving past parks/schools. As a dog owner it may be in the form of keeping your dog close at heel, and on a lead around children or in a situation where it could be reasonably predicted your dog may interact with children (IE in a public place / park etc). The question of children is particulalry important given that around 1100 of the hospital admissions are children under 10 years of age and 50% of those required plastic surgery.
Just going to leave this here for posterity:
It’s against the law to let a dog be dangerously out of control anywhere, eg:
in a public place
in a private place (eg a neighbour’s house or garden)
in the owner’s home
The law applies to all dogs.
Out of control
Your dog is considered dangerously out of control if it:
injures someone
makes someone worried that it might injure them
A court could also decide that your dog is dangerously out of control if:
it injures someone’s animal
the owner of the animal thinks they could be injured if they tried to stop your dog attacking their animal
EDIT - I forgot to mention that I do agree there is an odd slant of the law regarding dogs defending their owners, like in the example you mention above.
That said, if someone gets mugged it is a horrible experience, but does the mugger deserve to be killed or seriously mauled by a dog though? I know we generally hate thieves and such, but we dont punish them with maimings or death do we? So as far as justice / law is concerned, I think it is perhaps a necessary evil to treat the very few cases like the one you mention in the way that we do. Otherwise it opens the door to all kinds of unpleasant scenarios.
