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Dog attacks on mail carriers hit 6,755 as online sales boom
Booming Online Sales Mean More Dog Bites for Mail Carriers
Booming online retail sales are good news for the U.S. Postal Service, but its carriers are incurring a cost: more dog bites.
Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year to 6,755, up 206 from the previous year and the highest in three decades, as internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. The high for attacks dated back to the 1980s, at more than 7,000, before maulings by pit bulls and other potentially aggressive dogs became a public issue.
Los Angeles topped the 2016 list with 80 attacks on postal workers, followed by Houston with 62 and Cleveland with 60.
The Postal Service released its annual figures Thursday as part of National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which begins Sunday.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @06:42AM (1 child)
Currently we have places trying to bad dogs by breed, which is... useful but terribly inaccurate. (25% chow, 25% doberman, 25% great dane, 25% rottweiler... not on the ban list so perfectly OK then!) We have owners who are all "my dog would never..." until shown otherwise, like my neighbor with the pit bull that took a 3x7 inch chunk of flesh off some lady's leg.
It's dumb. With DNA for the dogs we can do better, provided that we account for people putting "nice" breeds unattended with little kids. We can then wipe out the bad DNA over time, doing a better job of breeding than we ever could before. If that happens to wipe out a breed, oh well, but let's not do it on purpose.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @06:12AM
What we need is for dog owners to agree to be publicly executed if their dog attacks anyone and causes any serious harm, in order to own a dog. If this happened, I wouldn't expect the ownership rates to change, but I would expect mass executions of dog owners. These people are absolutely insane about their dogs. (Note, I'm not claiming all dog owners are insane, or that all dogs are dangerous, just that owners of dangerous dogs (which are a minority) are insane in their devotion to them and belief in their safety.)