I grew up in a rural area and we had no leash laws. We did let our dogs run loose, however unlike the situation you are describing it was over a half mile from our house to the road. We never had a problem with a dog leaving our actual house area, on the occasion we did have a dog that would try to roam then he would stay in the dog run unless we were outside (which was most of the day) to watch him. I will admit that where I lived everyone used to let their dogs loose, it's very much a rural thing. But unlike the city we don't have cars to worry about thankfully, if we did I'm sure it would have been differently. Now, I'm not trying to start an arugment or anything, so if anyone has a problem with what I said please just PM me.

I also wanted to edit this.. We lived on a 50 acre plot of land,so as I said before the road was a pretty far walk and our dogs never left the area near the house so there was no one that they could have bothered.