Ensuring safe journeys

Whether your dog is a seasoned traveler or just adapting to the back seat, the priority is a safe ride. Our dog car safety harness enhances the comfort and safety of your traveling companion. With the Hurtta Travel Harness ECO, your dog can ride securely not only in the trunk but also in the passenger side of your vehicle.

The Travel Harness ECO is the culmination of three years of dedicated product development. Our goal was to ensure the safest possible transport for dogs in cars. This period is three times longer than our normal product development cycle. In creating the new dog harnesses, Hurtta's designers dug into various fields such as strength calculations, accelerations, metal alloys, motoring legislation, and more – areas typically unfamiliar in clothing design. We collaborated with experts from Savonia University of Applied Sciences, Liikenneturva and Traficom in Finland for this project.

Safe transportation of dogs in cars involves coordinating multiple aspects. Our multidimensional product development process focused on ensuring the functionality and durability of various components while prioritizing the comfort and ergonomics of the harness. The safety of the harness was rigorously tested through numerous pull, wear, and crash tests. It was also fitted and tested for comfort on 50 different dog breeds, encompassing a total of 114 dogs.

Between 2020 and 2023, approximately 10 different sample sets of the Hurtta Travel Harness ECO were produced, adapted, and tested on various dog breeds. All metal fastening buckles and loops were specially developed for this seat belt harness. We thoroughly tested the durability of quilting, ribbons, sewing threads, and various structures through tensile tests. Special attention was paid to fabric selection to ensure all materials met safety standards and were sufficiently durable. Consequently, recycled materials typically used in Hurtta harnesses were limited to the lining. All strap structures, and metal and plastic parts exposed to stress are newly developed.

We paid special attention to the harness handle's structure, which endures enormous force during sudden braking or in a collision. The handle's design, materials, stitching, and even the sewing threads were meticulously selected to ensure that the seat belt structure can withstand a crash.

Besides durability, the design's starting point was the comfort of the harness, assured through several fitting and testing rounds with dogs of varied breeds and travel habits. The harness's comfort is guaranteed by its snug fit, soft details, and the flexibility it offers dogs to sit, stand, or lie down.

Hurtta’s dog Travel Harness ECO has undergone multiple crash tests, with each harness size passing the crash test four times. The final product meets all set safety requirements, withstanding forces up to 25 times the dog's weight in a collision. We will continue to monitor and test the quality of these safety belt harnesses by examining each manufacturing batch individually.

In developing crash test dummies, we partnered with an English company specializing in training dummies for rescue operations. By modifying their dog dummy model, we created a suitable dummy for crash-testing our harnesses.