Road Safety

... a rather alarming letter from a motorist Roy Greavesley.








HORSE MAGAZINE: AUGUST 2012 ISSUE

Anyone who has read the JULY issue will have noticed on the letters page of HORSE magazine a letter from a motorist.

If like me you were so upset and cross by the sentiments of the motorist that you couldn't bring yourself to reply, worry no more Karry Gardner has spoken for us, what a brilliant letter, and despite her accident as a child she still loves horses!! 

Now, before I get all cross and emotional as a horse lover, here are a few FACTS:

The Law of the Land or what's commonly known as the Highway Code and what it says regarding horses on the road or 'vulnerable road users'.

Once an individual has applied for a licence to drive he is accepting these regulations and guidelines, it's his obligation to demonstrate not only the skill to operate a vehicle but an duty of care to fellow road users.  

Now most of us riders would rather be riding on a bridleway and not have to ride on the roads at all, but there aren't nearly enough bridleways  around so a certain amount of roadwork is necessary for most of us.

Whilst we all wait with bated breath for the 'Greavesley Report' to be published so we can finally tackle  the 'problems' most of our horses have with traffic on the roads, we'll just have to carry on with 'mollycoddling' them and do the best we can when drivers drive past us without any thought because they're in a hurry and don't believe anything or anyone should slow them down, though some feel 'obliged to' at least Roy did slow down. 

We'll eagerly await any new technique, where we can 'teach' our horses to leave behind every natural instinct in their millions of years of evolutionary development.  With little insight or any experience not just of horses, but of other human beings or creatures of any kind, it's wrong to suggest we can make another living creature bend to our will when every primal instinct is to the contrary....

....and all of us creatures get scared, not just horses, is there a programme in the pipeline to cure us humans of our fears too?

The point is, not only does this kind of simplified approach seem to lack any kind of empathy with the living creatures we share this planet with, because horses have humans on them too, it assumes horses can be fixed 'once and for all'.

I shudder to think!

Horses don't need to be cured, they need to be understood.

There are so many things in our environment horses might be worried about, not least the traffic, but it's because we're in the traffic when horses get scared that means it's the drivers that we are asking to deal with a situation and be kind and courteous.   As a rider, it's conceivable we may never identify the thing that's spooked our horse when we're on-board, he sees things and hears thing completely out of our range, it's what he's built for.  A vastly superior sense of potential danger that has kept horses pretty much unchanged for millions of years.

A thoughtful and courteous driver can make all the difference in a tricky situation, and can even make a situation so much better and safer for a horse, he could even save his life and that of the rider by slowing down and giving a scared horse room to move and think.

...and for all those such brilliant drivers out there, and in my experience there are many more of the nice ones than not, we thank you very much.

SOME THINGS A MOTORIST MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT HORSES:

...and they've been around much longer than humans!

*A horse lives in a world of constant safety assessment, he is acutely aware of his surroundings and makes second by second behaviour adjustments depending on which dangers he perceives.

*Horses have prey animal instincts, if they decide there is a threat to their safety, they will run to achieve an approximate quarter mile distance between them and the foe. They will turn to face the threat and reassess.

*A horse needs time to think, an average of seven seconds to size up a situation, where he will often ‘plant’ himself rigid to the spot in order to give a problem his complete attention.

Horses can react in surprising ways to perceived foe, that’s why it’s important that horses are given lots of room by any vehicle passing them.

*A horse is an intelligent and powerful creature, millions of years of instinct development mean he judges danger in different ways to humans, and though not a natural fighter, he can and will defend himself if he feels that is the only way to avoid certain death – if the horse wasn’t like this, it would have died out millions of years ago...eaten.

*Horses take exception to unexpected things to maintain their own personal feeling of safety – and being safe is the most important thing to a horse...even more important than food.  It is difficult for humans to understand these reactions, because we are the opposite of horses, we are predators and have developed a very different existence. All we can hope for as keepers of horses is an understanding of our horses needs and give them the space they need to express them and to help them manage these reactions.

Cyclists and vehicles: ‘please pass slow and wide’