Dog Travel Safety

Kurgo was founded on the principle of travel safety – for you and your dog. Like you, we are avid dog owners and we also want to enjoy the world with our best friends.

Our first pet product was the Back Seat Barrier, which was created in 2003 by Kitter Spater, Kurgo Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, to keep his Plott Hound, Zelda from nudging into the front seat of the car. Since then Kurgo has developed an innovative line of products to help pets and their owners enjoy the world safely together.

Pet Travel Safety. The Facts.

We are all traveling more with our pets whether for daily errands or family vacations. Over 56% of dog owners traveled with their pets at least once a month in the past year, according to the AAA/Kurgo Dog Travel Safety Study.

While only 16% of people restrain their pets while traveling in the car, over 83% said they know it would be safer if they did, according to the AAA/Kurgo Study. Most people report that they just never considered the dangers of unrestrained pets in the car. Others cite that restraints are inconvenient.

Given these challenges, we have developed a line of products to address pet travel that meet the needs of a broad range of dogs and owners as well as their interest in changing how they travel together.

The first step to safer pet travel is increasing awareness of pets causing distracted driving by encouraging drivers to use solutions to keep their pets out of the front seat and off their laps.

With this in mind, we design our products to address one or all of these key pet travel safety issues:

  1. Reducing driver distraction and therefore preventing accidents before they happen
  2. Protecting human passengers from pets who become dangerous projectiles in an accident
  3. Protecting pets from injury in an accident

About Crash-Testing

While there are no government agencies that set safety standards for dog travel products, we have been working for years on testing and improving our products to perform better in the case of accidents. We use standards set by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 213 for child car seats to test our dog harnesses and seat belts. This regulation subjects child safety seats to the decelerations they would experience in a 30 mph frontal vehicle crash.

In our crash-test videos, we show the sled tests conducted for our crash-tested harnesses. The Enhanced Strength Tru-Fit Smart Harness is tested for dogs up to 35kg.

We will continue to innovate in this area based on our testing and customer product feedback to develop the safest and easiest to use products possible.

You can learn more about our testing standards and methods on our Crash-Testing Methodology Page.

Convenience & Ease of Use

We recognise that convenience and ease of use is a major barrier for people to implement safer pet travel practices.

That is why we try to make our products as easy to use as possible. The easier they are to use the more likely pet parents are to use them.

We think the first step is avoiding distracted driving with products, such as the Backseat Barrier, Auto Grass, Booster Seat, Auto Zipline, and Dog Hammock that keep dogs out of the front seat and off drivers’ laps.

The next step is to reduce distracted driving and keep the pet restrained so they do not become a projectile. This can be achieved with any of our harnesses attached to a seat belt tether. We even offer a very convenient direct-to-seat belt attachment that clicks right into the seat belt system.

Our Impact and Enhanced Strength Tru-Fit Harnesses offer the ultimate protection for dogs and humans. When connected to your car's seat belt system, they pass crash-testing based on standards from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 213 for child car seats.