Safety for horses in horsebox

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Carrots&Mints

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This question has come from a collegue at work after I have been discussing my new horsebox and hes made me think about it alot.

If the horses are in herringbone postion and you had to do an emergancy stop, what safety features do the wagons have to stop the horses crashing through the wall into the living area?

How it came about is that I was discussing that the horsebox I have bought is for 3 horses yet Ill only be ever taking 2 and that how easy would it be to move the living wall into the horses area, and that looking online people have been using simple timber frames and stockboard such as on this website http://jimfranklin.co.uk/truck/index.html.
 
In many lorrys there very little to stop your horse becoming a life taking weapon in a serious accident .
I have had to do a full emergency stop in a lorry with two horses in it when an old man pulled on to a A road right in front of the lorry and then stalled I avoided collision but both horses went down one got up it's self the other was trapped under the petition but was very calm and I got him up with the assistance of the driver of a supermarket truck behind me who was lovely and kind .
The horse who went down that a deep cut on a stifle caused I think by the shoe of the other horse .
I have seen when I lived abroad a fatal accident caused by Steel girders coming into the cab from behind when the driver was involved on a collision.
These things make you really think .
 
Oh gosh sounds hurrendous! Yes hes really made me think today!!

If you had had a full length partition that might have stopped the one horse injuring the other? Might take a look into full length partitions just to elimate an accident like yours.

I wonder if they do reinforced walls in wagons???
 
Carrots&Mints said:
Oh gosh sounds hurrendous! Yes hes really made me think today!!

If you had had a full length partition that might have stopped the one horse injuring the other? Might take a look into full length partitions just to elimate an accident like yours.

I wonder if they do reinforced walls in wagons???
Click to expand...

Some lorries have a reinforced wall between living and horses some don't it's something to check when you buy .
Of course it adds weight .
 
Just adding I considered the full length petitions but I fear that it might have caused more injury at least they had somewhere to fall I don't really know what's best.
 
Yeah tricky one to know whats best isnt it! I wonder what the reinforce the wall with??? Steel???

Any horsebox builders on this website that can answer??? :)
 
If you look at professional transporters they will have steel bulkheads covered with 1 inch GRP and then usually a half inch plastic kick board aka stokboard

Bulk heads are just that-to stop anything from coming through.

However, if you start looking at professional lorries you will first see that they are HGV's so that they CAN carry the steel .

Now down the weights you start getting flimsy and flimsier!

The worst ever 'company/home build' and I will call it a home build as the conversion man had no idea that the horse in a rear facing 3.5t tin pot baked bean can would/could double barrel and there was just 1/4 inch ply (not even marine ply) to STOP the horse from making contact with the driver and the middle passenger.

This 3.5t tin pot should have been taken off the road as one kick or one emergency stop the driver would have been INSTANTLY killed.

The laws are changing thankfully for new builds only - no more cut throughs and now seating with seat belts have to be put in all in October 2014! So there you have that!

BUT anyone can convert an older lorry and cut it up and no laws seem to apply to people or even common sense!

My friend has Oakleys and they have 4 inch bulk heads-nothing is going to get through that!

I would check your weight first before wanting 4 inches of steel bulkheads!! Having read the webpage I cannot find any relation to weight and I would really really doubt it could carry 3 16.2hh!

Also reading about the ramp as well got me worried and the fact 2 springs only! I like 3 springs, goes up easier and far safer if a spring should fail
 
I definitely wondered about the rear facing 3.5 lorries. When he was younger, my horse would always start off a journey in the trailer with a couple of good hard kicks on the rear ramp of the trailer, but it certainly altered me to the possibility of a double barrel kick. I would want to know that there was a very good barrier between the driver and passenger and the horse's hind legs.
 
My lorry can carry 3, but I only carry 2, so have a space and a partition between pony and living. I would only ever consider putting a very small pony in the space nearest the living. I wouldn't fancy floor length partitions, I would worry they could get a hoof stuck under the bottom.
 
foraday said:
My friend has Oakleys and they have 4 inch bulk heads-nothing is going to get through that!
Click to expand...
Sorry but I seriously doubt any manufacturer would install a 4" thick solid steel bulkhead. taking on just minimum measurements it would weigh in the region of 4185kg or 4.2t.
Seems strange that people get silly over bulkhead design yet are perfectly happy that a horse would struggle to kick its way out of an18mm thick glassonite body panel.
All a bulkhead needs to do is prevent the maximum force that be expected to be applied to it in the event of a crash which would be simple enough to calculate based on the max possible weight of a horse that could fit in the lorry.
 
I've got an equi-sport Renault Master conversion and it has "a full steel original bulk head wall with a further box steel wall engineered around this , this is then covered in GRP board which is extremely strong, and fully washable – then on top of the GRP we cover it in EVA impact boarding. "
This is from the spec sheet I have although it doesn't seem to be mentioned on their website. My gelding has given it a good few (single barrel) kicks to test it and not even made a slight dint or mark!
 
We were recently looking into this and found that a lot were very sketchy on safety. At one point We were particularly looking at 3.5 ton conversions and looking at converting our own van. We called a well known company who make the ramps to see what tests had been performed to ensure the van stays structurally sound when you are removing half of the side and were just advised that they had never had any problems. I'm now probably going to look at a trailer as whilst it has it's own safety issues at least I haven't got half a ton of horse missile sat right behind my head!
 
foraday said:
Having read the webpage I cannot find any relation to weight and I would really really doubt it could carry 3 16.2hh!

Also reading about the ramp as well got me worried and the fact 2 springs only! I like 3 springs, goes up easier and far safer if a spring should fail
Click to expand...

What webpage??????
 
MagicMelon said:
I would have expected lorries to have perhaps 3 steel bars running between the living and the horse area to stop them coming through. How scary to think there's nothing there...
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Me and my friend at work were discussing this and we thought (being engineers lol) that the best way would to have a steel frame welded to the lorry body to be secure and then steel inner frame (like the self build but not timber.. steal) and then line with stockboard! Shouldnt get through that we was thinking!
 
Your work colleague is quite correct in pointing this out to you.
This is the advantage of having a separate container to the cab in as much as the front of the container and the horse area should be reinforced for this eventuality.
I have actually had a head on collision with a horse in the container. (Other driver skidded in to us). The fact the horse was sideways meant that it's side was constrained by the sudden slowing down of the lorry by the strong heavy duty partitions which just slightly bent but held the horse in position. This is the advantage of having the horses on a diagonal as they have the length of the partition to absorb any sudden impact caused by sharply slowing down.
The weight of a well built bulk head to withstand a horse being projected forward by sudden braking would be about half a ton and thi sis why most manufacturers ignore this safety feature as it would dramatically reduce the pay load.
 
OWLIE185 said:
Your work colleague is quite correct in pointing this out to you.
This is the advantage of having a separate container to the cab in as much as the front of the container and the horse area should be reinforced for this eventuality.
I have actually had a head on collision with a horse in the container. (Other driver skidded in to us). The fact the horse was sideways meant that it's side was constrained by the sudden slowing down of the lorry by the strong heavy duty partitions which just slightly bent but held the horse in position. This is the advantage of having the horses on a diagonal as they have the length of the partition to absorb any sudden impact caused by sharply slowing down.
The weight of a well built bulk head to withstand a horse being projected forward by sudden braking would be about half a ton and thi sis why most manufacturers ignore this safety feature as it would dramatically reduce the pay load.
Click to expand...

Thankyou Owlie for your reply :) My wagon is a separate container to the cab, its literally a box on top of the chassis lol.

Going to have a look at the bulkhead, i would rather have a less substantial living and have a well made bulkhead rather than the opposite.
 
"The laws are changing thankfully for new builds only - no more cut throughs"
Hi how did you find this information, and do you mean the converting of goods vans 3.5 ton in to horse vans rather than coach built?
 
Any new build whether 3.5t, 7.5t right up to 44t horse lorry can no longer have a cut through to the living section from October 2014, unless it has been crash tested and a safety certificate given to that 'make/brand' of vehicle.

I sincerely doubt EVERY coach builder out there has the money to crash test ie

2 horse box forward facing
3 horse box herring bone
4 horse box herringbone
4 horse box forward facing
5 horse box berringbone
5 horse box forward facing
6 horse box herringbone
6 horse box forward facing

etc etc all the way up to 18

EACH and everyone will require the prototype to be crash tested to the NCAP standards

So as you can see to crash test every single one of the coach builders brand will be costly!

So any 64 plate from OCT 2014 will require the crash testing

This does not apply to older horse boxes coach built that you can take off the horse section and put on a 14 plate. Older horse boxes that are coach built will become very desirable now as they can be literally taken off and put on a slightly newer plate and be exempt.

Similarly now set belts MUST be in the living section very much like the motor homes you see out and about, again October 2014 and again new builds.

Ask any reputable coachbuilder that is a member of Vbra and they will be happy to discuss the new build requirements
 
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