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- A 2021 study of fatal dog attacks in Europe during the period 1995–2016 placed the United Kingdom (with 56 fatalities) as fourth in the top five countries for

• mjburgess 3y ago
  I'm not arguing against dog leash laws; nor against dog leash signs. The dog leashing issue is irrelevant to my point. My point is about the role of such signs and rules in policing people's behaviour in the abstract. If, in the situation so-described, the owner and their dog were in any way an actual danger, then they should be reprimanded. If they werent, then let's observe that they werent. 56 fatal dog attacks in a decade is perhaps lower than what i would have guessed anyway. I would have bet higher. I just dont see why when invited to imagine that on some sunny day in a park, a person walking their dog without a leash, is precipitating the 57th death. This is absurd. Removing all the information from the situation and reducing down to a fantasy of possible violence is the pretence here for 'preventing harm'. This prevents no harm in the particular situation involved. I have no doubt dogs are dangerous, as is almost everything. I have extreme levels of doubt that some random guy in a park with a dog off a leash has anything to do with any marginal changes to the safety of people in that park. My concern is how this snowballs in people's imaginations away from the concrete reality into some abstraction where there are victims involved.
  • Podgajski 3y ago
    You have not asked me once about what types of dogs they were or how the dogs were behaving. so I would say it’s you. That’s operating without any data and it’s just acting out of your imagination. But it’s irrelevant. Because you’re just thinking about people being in danger and not the dog being in danger or not if it is disturb the other animals that also have at the park like the squirrels in the birds. You’re only seeing the dog owner as the victim in the circumstance. And all that doesn’t matter either, because we as a community created this rule, this law, that your dog needs to be on a leash went in this park. If you don’t like the law, you could push to overturn the law. Or if you don’t like the law, you can move to a place that doesn’t have these laws. We have decided that the risk of even a slight chance of a dog hurting someone is more important than the slight inconvenience of someone having a dog on a leash. Of all people you in data science should understand risk benefit. What is the harm of a dog being on a leash?
    • mjburgess 3y ago
      As I said, it's not really about the leash -- nor the sign. It's about people who deputise themselves in the service of these rules, and who imagine risk, and appoint themselves enforces of a social order of values that is insensitive to particulars. There are many things I dislike, take littering. I would find it very obnoxious for a person to litter in a park, and to ignore the signs against it. But I feel no compulsion to go discipline them, or involve myself in their disciplining, or deputise myself as a member of some social police force. Were they to be murdering someone, that would be different. I am not a person who 'thinks of the children', quite the opposite. I think of a world designed for children, and would then go out of my way to destroy it. I am unsympathetic with these 'daily oppressions' which constrain people's lived freedom, in the service of radical abstractions with marginal effects; the service of imagined dangers, and the like. I would much prefer a society in which people occasionally littered to one in which no one dead out of fear of some reprisal. The problem with "what's the harm" thinking is its aggregation. When you have disciplined people's daily lives to that degree where all these "what's the harm"-level rules are in operation -- then you're living in a nightmare. It is for this reason I took against ever living in america. Where 'neighbourly policing' seems everywhere; and 'city bylaws' run amok
• cameronh90 3y ago
  The UK is also the third most populous country in that study, so that’s not surprising. I’m not sure the reason behind the rise, but my anecdotal experience is that people are more likely now to keep their dog on a lead than they were in the past. We have seen a rise in poorly bred and poorly socialised large breed dogs over the past few decades, the latest being the XL Bully. My guess is they are contributing significantly to the rise in attacks. Also speaking as someone who always keeps their dog on a lead in parks, the lead is really more of a suggestion for a big dog. If a Bully, Doberman or even a Husky wants to attack, a lead won’t stop it.