To drive to take dog for walk

[Chimpd0g]

Before you hurl abuse, please hear me out

I have 2 choices of where to take dog for walk locally:

1. small busy park within walking distance, getting there by walking along pavements therefore risking infecting others or getting infected myself or
2. driving literally 5 minutes up the road and walking in a bigger open space where I won’t see many people, and if I do I can easily go the other way and avoid them

Surely it’s better for everyone if I go in the car?

It has been confirmed you are permitted to drive "a reasonable distance" to exercise your dog, so go for it: www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/driving-exercise-lockdown-bristol-police-4008750

The whole purpose behind the guidelines is social distancing so if it's more socially distanced to drive somewhere to walk the dog, do that. I do it every morning, 7 mins drive from my house to walk in an area I see zero other people. I am not passing anything on to anyone, I am not at risk of having someone else pass anything on to me. Please ignore the idiots saying it's better to walk through town and come into contact with people who may be spreading the virus to you; you are clearly not abusing the guidelines in this case so go ahead.

The trouble is, on threads like this is that people project their own environment onto other people's. So, it might be possible for you to walk to a local place easily, but for someone else's locality, it would be a very different thing.
And stop with all the hysterical "you dog-walkers are killing people" nonsense.
Matt Hancock has said it's reasonable to drive a short distance to exercise. Therefore there clearly are no "rules" about it, beyond those the MN mafia are making up.

And I've never seen any official announcing that the reason people shouldn't be using cars is in case they crash or break down.
And if breakdown people are concerned about social distancing, then someone should have told the four AA guys I saw playing football together the other day in the car park where they'd parked up, presumably as they had no business.

This is what I thought, and I was going at 7am to reduce the risk of seeing anyone even further

I am generally of the don't drive camp, however dd(17) has just taken the dog out for a walk, she encountered a man on the pavement so she moved into the road to avoid him and his off lead dog ran into the middle of the road and jumped up on her, man then had to come into the road to get his dog away whilst dd then had to move even further so she was 2m away by which time a lorry had to stop in the middle of the road so he didn't run them all over. Lorry driver shouted at the man for having his dog off lead and asked dd if she was ok. This was in 100m of our house. She continued to walk to the park where it was heaving with large groups of people and a dozen of off lead dogs running up to everyone. She left quickly but not before 2 off lead dogs came right up to her owners close behind!

So first of all PUT YOU FUCKING DOG ON A LEAD
And second of all if you need to do a short drive to stay away from this type of bullshit and stupidity then just bloody do it.

If it’s a 5 minute drive, can’t you just walk to the bigger space?

Busier pavements in centres of population.
And a 5 minute drive may get you quite a long way in some areas. Not the OPs case, but in the other scenario of people living on roads with national spee

I have total sympathy for you OP, not everyone has a safe place to walk just outside of their front door and I think in many cases it would be safer to drive a short distance before walking dogs. However, we do not have the systems in place to enforce such a system, so I think we need to comply with the guidance as it is, given that it is only for a short time.

It would certainly be safer for me to drive than walk. I have to walk along a narrow national speed limit country road with no pavements with HGVs and tractors hurtling past. I’ve just checked on Google maps and it’s a 22 minute Walk of Terror to the nearest footpath versus a 3 minute drive. It is surrounded by farms so busy from sun up to sun down. The only other option has a narrow pavement down one-side only (very narrow, back when I had a pushchair the pavement was too narrow for it) with an even busier road with plenty of blind bends. Passing people on this stretch is only possible if one of you takes your chances in the road.

I have made the very tough decision to only walk my dog on Saturdays and Sundays when it is just the tractors on the road. It’s an absolute bloody nightmare. I’ve come down to dog shit on the carpet most mornings as he won’t go in the garden and he barks on and off all day.

This is all on the expectation that lockdown is only for another month or so. Should it continue I would have to review my plan.

SuperFurry, then in your situation I would ask why on earth you have chosen to only walk your poor dogs at weekends? Listen to what Matt Hancock said and drive safely somewhere local and walk them.

Police here are handing out fines like candy @CallmeAngelina. To be completely honest, I can afford to take them by car even if I wanted to

*I can’t afford

This is from the BBC News website today.
It clearly says that police should not give sanctions to people driving a short distance to exercise.

As I said in a previous post - it’s common sense to go where you will meet the fewest people.

So don’t drive to beaches and beauty spots. Don’t drive out of your local area.
But a 5 minute drive to an empty wood/field/footpath where you know you can walk more safely than you can immediately outside your house is absolutely fine. There is no rule against it, and it makes sense as the safer option for everyone.

hesMyLobster, that should be posted as a sticky at the top of every thread at the moment.

The Forestry Commission own our local green spaces and have prohibited car travel to them. The police are enforcing this with fines. You get a warning note and your number plate logged, then a fine if you return. I’m not even sure if it’s legal, but they are doing it. I will try and post photos...

Yanbu to drive 5 mins up the road to ensure you can uphold the social distancing.

Common sense has to be used. The government have said not to travel distances out with the local area to exercise, they are not including short car trips locally within that rule.

If it's safer to use the car for the short trip providing you're not traveling to visit a beauty spot or touristy place. The chances of an accident in your local area is slim and I'd guess would be at slow speeds that no emergency services would be needed anyway.

I have dogs that I physically can't street walk so use the car to get them out where we always go. Day in day out, before this all happened and will continue to do so. We tried the local street walks and was more likely to need nhs service after that and passed multiple people rather than being able to avoid them.

Driving a few minutes to be far away from people is the better option than doubling/tripling the journey time and running into people.