Problems with Pet Barriers

We're having a baby. Because Pepper is high energy we don't want her to roam free in the car with the baby. The first thing that came to my mind were those barriers I've seen countless people with. They have various forms, but the end result is the same, a metal fence-like wall that prevents your pet from leaving the rear compartment.

So I did some online research which means reading Amazon reviews, doing various Google searches, etc. We then went to a pet store which carried them. Throughout we learned that almost all pet barriers are tension mounted, which means that what keeps them in place is the tension between the roof and floor of the rear compartment. Because I'm lazy and I don't like to have to redo things I looked into how often you have to reset the tension. I did read some people have energetic dogs which bang into the barrier alot, causing them to have to reset the tension quite often.

There didn't seem to be very many alternatives to a barrier. There was a net (which is also tension mounted) and having a crate in the back. I didn't like the net because of the same tension problems. I didn't really like the crate because it would be a pain to have to set it up and fold it back down depending on if we were taking the dog with us. So we decided to go with the metal barrier.

That is until something popped in my mind. What happens during an accident. The barrier is tension mounted. It certainly would hold if the dog came crashing into it. That means I would have a large piece of metal falling/flying through the car. The whole point of getting this is safety. Safety for the baby, safety for us, and safety for Pepper. It doesn't seem very safe to me to have a chunk of metal ready to fall over the back seat(where the baby would be).

We ended up getting a crate. We're also working on tie-downs for it so that we don't have the problem of the crate flying through the air in a crash either.