I would avoid the elevated seats as they do not seem to have any kind of adequate safety features and if anything, put the dogs at a more dangerous level where they could be slammed into the back of the seat in front, or catapulted through the air
.
The seatbelt clips that give the dog a certain length to move around on also are not very safe, and would be lethal if they are just attached to the dog's collar as they would just become a device for hanging the dog or decapitating it (a harness is better but not much I think). Basically they would just become a noose to hang the dog and as most of them are adjustable in length the hard force of a car crash even at a slow speed could easily force the lead out to its full length which would again, probably kill a cavalier on impact and break its neck as it hit the back of the seat in front of it. I am not sure that people always understand the physics of a car crash–that you might only be traveling at 25 or 30 mi./h, but if you hit a stationary object, or a car traveling at an equivalent modest speed in the other direction, you could be hurled forward with up to a ton of impact. I found the actual calculation and put it in a thread long ago, but I don't remember any longer where it is on the board!
If people want to (safely!) see what would happen to dogs in a crash, including what happens with dogs on a harness with too long a lead attached to a seatbelt, then check out this video using crash test dummies and stuffed dogs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts4sMQA4zqA&NR=1
There are several harnesses that are designed to be safe; these hook into the seat belt but do not allow the seatbelt to extend and should not give extra length for the dog to move around in the back -- or if they do, they should be shortened so that the dog would not have the length to flip around and smack into the back of the seat in front In a crash. A good safe harness should have broad straps so that they do not slice into the dog if there were an impact, and ideally would be padded around the chest. I would also look for metal clips, not plastic clips that buckle into the seat belt.
The RAC ones are fairly decent.
I wouldn't put dogs in the boot/trunk of a car for travel regardless of whether they are in a crate or not (a hatchback is a bit different
). An actual boot is pretty dark and claustrophobic, and there's little safety protection if the car were rear-ended. Car travel in a crate should be in a hard plastic crate in the back seat, buckled securely so that the crate will not move, or in the hatchback area as an alternative but I still think the backseat is safer because it's inside the frame that is intended to protect passengers were is the hatchback area is not. Being in a crate also allows the dog a bit more freedom of movement than being on a harness. I have found many dogs twist themselves around in the harness and then get quite upset.
Of course a dog should never go in a front seat, as most people know
–these days almost all cars have airbags and a dog the size of the cavalier would easily be killed on impact if the bag deployed. A dog sitting on a lap in the back or the front is also a potentially lethal object in a moving car and would not be likely to survive even a modest impact because it would be catapulted through the air, where it could also seriously injure or kill car passengers, especially children.
It's definitely worth investing in a good sturdy harness or hard plastic crate for traveling
; though a solid wire crate buckled in should be okay too.
