[QUOTE=qazwart;11526610Almost every city in the country has a rule that if you toss out a refrigerator, you have to remove the door. Apparently, enough kids get trapped inside abandoned refrigerator[/QUOTE]
The laws are still on the books in many cities, but the problem is mostly from refrigerators built before 1957. That was the effective date of a law requiring refrigerator doors to be ‘childproof’ – openable from inside. Nearly all of them have a magnetic seal now, which can be easily opened from inside. (But there are reports of kids hiding inside one playing hide-and-seek, with the door closed, not realizing there is no air circulation, and thus suffocating themselves.)
Some friends of ours had a couple of dogs that LOVED to ride in the trunk of the car. They’d get some really strange looks when they arrived somewhere and opened the trunk and a couple of big galumphy dogs happily bounded out.
(Not a smart idea, but then again these folks have made a lot of choices that I wouldn’t.)
My friends will routinely ride in the trunk of the car if there’s too many people needing a lift and not enough seats, and the cars we have over here never have release handles on the inside. Obviously they’re always fine because they have people there to let them out but I always find it weird how willing a lot of people are to trap themselves in tiny enclosed spaces…
There are similar scenes in Grease (to sneak into a drive-in movie without paying) and Out of Sight (to confine a fugitive and the deputy U.S. marshal who’s been chasing him).
Bolding mine.
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Is having dog on your lap while riding in a car illegal in Spain?
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How big of a dog is “large” here? Would a smaller dog be legal?
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Aren’t you glad I skipped 3 and that silly “hi opal” meme?
I am amazed that this law was only passed in 2002. I would swear cars have had these for 20 years or more.
I suspect that the actual citation was for having the drivers view obstructed. (It just makes a more interesting story in the news media to talk about a large dog on a lap.) I had friends in high school get a similar ticket when they had 8 people in a small car.
Some might, but none that I am aware of. Volvo got interior trunk releases in early to mid 2000s (I don’t recall the exact year)
I’ve riden in the trunk before when there wasn’t room in the car and it was an amusing novelty (and no risk of suffocation; it’s a bit stuffy but hardly hermetically sealed) but, in retrospect, it was pretty dumb. Had the car been rear-ended, I would have been seriously screwed. Don’t try this at home, kids!
If the trunk doesn’t have a release, try to disable one of the brake lights so a sop will pull the carjacker over…
It is illegal for a person riding in the front seats to have another person, looseish objects or an animal on his lap (you can get stopped and fined if your Mom is rummaging through her ginormous handbag while riding shotgun, normally you might get stopped but are extremely unlikely to get fined). The fact that the dog was large simply means that the cops couldn’t see at first glance that she, like her husband, wasn’t wearing the seat belt.
Having 6 people in a car rated for 5 is illegal. So’s having 9, and the trunk is definitely not rated for transportation of people or animals. Animals are supposed to be in the back seat or between the seats; in theory they should be in a carrier if they’re small (and the carrier should be kept in place using one of the seatbelts) or wear a seat belt if it’s a large enough dog. The belt rule doesn’t apply for old cars and vans which only have belts in the front seat, of course.
The traffic citations were for:
more people in the car than the car was rated for (the dog actually brings the count to 10 in terms of “plazas”, “seats”);
nobody wearing seatbelts (the car had 5);
shotgun rider carrying a dog on lap;
people in the trunk.
Where do you live that this is true?
It definitely happens (link to report of this exact thing, a week ago, near my house). In fact I wonder why the woman in question wasn’t able to escape, as the car was very new and should have been equipped with a release.
I can’t just let this go by. My Suzuki Aerio has been a fine car, an excellent car, reliable, powerful, roomy.
Is it possible that your friend’s cars are the Forenza and/or Verona, which were built by Daewoo? They were added to Suzuki’s line at the urging of GM, who owned bits of both companies, and were so awful that the president of Suzuki publicly apologized for them, and dumped them from the line as soon as he could. The current Suzuki lineup includes no Daewoo-built cars.
You know, it’s a good law and all, but the problem, at least these days, is that sick fucks are usually driving old Chevy Caprices or vans without windows. I think in order to pass inspection, every car should have one of these installed and working.
She may not have even thought to try and find a release. Until very recently, I had no idea most cars would have a release in the trunk, I’d probably try to kick my way out before looking for an inside handle. Of course, I don’t know what the inside release actually looks like from inside the trunk, so maybe it’s blindingly obvious!
Agreed–just yank out every wire that you find. Also kick out the taillight if you can, and wave at traffic if you can.