Traffic - a rant!

T

TURBOBERT

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My horse is 15 and we have had him 11 years. He was 100% in all traffic until 'an incident' with a lorry in the Spring when he was thoughly frightened and I fell off on the road.
I have nursed him through the summer building up his confidence again although dodging lorries generally by ducking in gateways. Today despite waving my arm to a lorry to slow down it totally ignored me and accelerated passed terrifying my horse and once more I was dumped. He ran down the road (fortunately a country one) I hailed a passing car pursued him and caught him before a serious accident could occur.

I am absolutely furious that my signalling was totally ignored and that I feel I can no longer hack out on my horse unless I know there will be no lorries eg Christmas Day! It is so frustrating!!!

Thank you - I feel better now
 
Glad you are both O.K., I try to avoid road as much as possible, and if I have to go on them, I make sure me and the horse are covered in Hi-Viz.
 
It's horrible when traffic doesn't listen to you.
We had an incident a while ago where there were 4 of us hacking, we were on a slight bend in a road and the person in front said there's a lorry coming (we were in single file) a car was approaching from behind so i asked it to wait, the car probably couldn't see the lorry cos of the bend, it waited a few seconds then thoght sod it and came steeming pass us! Had to come close when it suddenly saw the lorry and the lorry had to slam its brakes on! Luckily we were ok, but it was very close with the car hitting either us or the lorry.
Do they think we ask them to stop or slow down just for the hell of it?!?!
I am lucky that now i don't have to hack on roads that lorries frquent, and the local bin men are fab and stop and turn off engine in necessary! But i tend to avoid bin day anyway!
I hope you reported it to the BHS??
 
Thank goodness you weren't both seriously hurt. Please do report this incident to the BHS as they keep a record of all traffic accidents or near misses involving horses, this information helps them lobby for more off road riding. Were you riding in hi-viz? Unfortunately it is a fact of life that the roads are just getting busier (especially since the invention of SatNav) and people are in a hurry. 5 years ago I used to hack all over the place, but now with lorries using country lanes, I tend to stick to the "safe" routes and always wear lots of hi-viz. The local van drivers/car drivers all recognise me and are fab - quite often joking that I am lit up like a christmas tree
smile.gif
. We now box out to off-road riding instead of hacking to it. I hope your horse and you get over this nasty incident.
 
It is a great shame that the lorry did not respond to your hand signals.

If the lorry could be identified and the incident witnessed then he could be charged with driving without due care and attention. You would also be able to take a private action against him and claim for the damage it has done to your horses behaviour when ridden on te roads and any future loss of pleasure you will have from riding your horse on the roads.

Even if one can just remember the first few letters of the registration number and a description of the vehicle it is possible to identify a vehicle. Always report these incidents to the police and ask for an incident number as somethimes the same vehicle is stopped for another reason.

Sadly we all have to ride defensively on the roads but I always recomend that horse riders however experienced take the BHS road safety course and test because it gives one some usefull tools for riding on the roads.

Yes! please do report it to the BHS on the following link

http://www.bhs.org.uk/content/accident-report-form.asp
 
Sad to hear of your upsetting mishaps with the lorries. Were they from the local quarry by any chance? If so is it worth writing to the quarry manager, dont suppose it will have much impact but at least you will have tried. The fact that more than one serious accident could have occurred due to a drivers actions is not good for public relations etc. How about a letter to the local paper - negative press etc.

Hope both you and your horse are managing to get over the shock.
 
That's awful
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.

We have a local lane which used to be used by only dog walkers, cyclists and horse riders. It's a through road, so you'd get the odd car. but on the whole it was an ideal place to ride. Recently we've had alot of lorries and speeding cars down there. Just the other month I posted about a car which refused to stop to allow our pony to get onto the grass verge, narrowly missing his hocks.. he had a 7 year old child on him at the time and I had to physically stand between pony and car. A couple of months earlier a concrete mixing lorry came towards us. There was no wide verge, and we were almost pinned against the wall, again, small child on pony. Thankfully the pony is 101% and just walked on past the lorry (albeit at a squeeze).

We need to help the BHS lobby for more toll rides and open new bridleways. We have a local scheme for toll rides, and it's well worth speaking to your local council / BHS representative to see if they have anything similar. Chat to local farmers and ask if you can use their headlands in good conditions too.
And ALWAYS report bad driving and near accidents.
 
i hate riding on the roads, and people who dont slow down for horses is one of my biggest bug bears. poor horse, after all that time getting his confidence back. and poor you - i would have trouble going back out on the roads if that happened to me - twice! im scared enough as it is

we horse riders need to wear a police uniform or something when we go out riding, i wonder if people would slow down then

glad you two weren't too hurt
 
If I could just add that the British Horse Society is the only national charity organisation that acts on behalf of horse riders interests as far as providing off road routes go.

We are very much aware that with the dramatic increase in the speed and the number of motorised vehicles on the roads and the demand for land for housing that horse riders and drivers of horse drawn carriges require more off road riding routes than ever before as motorised vehicles do not mix well with horses.

Please please please join the British Horse Society as we need to increase our membership so that when we negotiate with government and local authorities on providing additional off road routes we can demonstrate the number of members we have. The more the better.

We have a national team of volunteer Bridleway officers (at least one in each county of the country) who work very hard to create additional off road riding routes.

So please join.

If you need any help with creating new off road routes in your area simple Email me with the town and county you keep your horse in and I will provide you with the contact details of your local BHS access officer.
 
Hi - thanks for that. Yes I was in Hi Viz - he saw us perfectly well as I also have a grey (almost white) horse! In addition I was waving my hands frantically. He just took no notice whatsoever.
Hi Mrs T - no it wasnt a quarry lorry - they are very good we find and slow down and stop if requested to do so. I think it was an O2 lorry but cant be sure and I was flat on my back as he speeded off so didnt get any part of the number sadly. An additional annoyance is he slowed down AFTER the incident presumably to look in his wing mirror to see what happened!!. You would have thought he would have done a little more that that before accelerating away!!

We live in a country area with little traffic generally but some of the roads are narrow with no 'escape' by way of wide verges. My horse clearly now fears being trapped. This is after 11 years of being bombproof. Certainly my enjoyment of riding has being reduced.

I will report it to the BHS Peter (I am a member) - there are very few bridle ways near us sadly - I would happily pay to ride across someones land! Sadly I must accept that my horse and I will be riding in an arena in future as the risk of injury - no only to me but to other road users from a loose horse is too great.
 
Turbobert

Well done on being a BHS member. Have you thought of joining your local county BHS committee and putting in put in to it as regards your riding area and your requirements?

I would report the incident to the police just in case and insist that they give you an incident number.

The driver of the 02 vehicle was clearly driving dangerously and probably can be identified as it was sign written and in a specific area. You must remember that all commercial vehicles and vans belonging to large organisations make their drivers sign in and sign out for the vehicle each day or each time they use it as they have to be able to identify the driver because of speed cameras etc. So an 02 white van in a specific place on a specific day can be identified by the fleet manager.

Would you like your local BHS bridleway officer to try and provide a safe off road route for you and other horse riders in the area. Take a look for the name and address of your BHS access officer in your BHS year book or contact me.

I used to ride all over Central London and one of te tricks I was taught by a mounted policeman was always to point at the driver of a vehicle that I wanted to slow down and then hold up the palm of my hand towards them.

I was crossing Hyde Park corner one day on horseback and managed to accidently stop a cavelcade containing the Queen and Nelson Mendela using this technique!
 
I had my first experience out hacking on the road weekend just past. We need to go along a main road and then turn right along a smaller road that leads to a Riding school. The girl I was riding with was showing me the way to go (new yard and all) and most people on our way were really very patient, esp as her horse is green and was a bit frightened of some logs!

The way back was a bit of a nightmare, people had obviously just dropped their children off at the riding school and were driving like complete idiots and one guy in a jag started swearing at me and drove deliberately close. I couldn't believe it! Then we had all these people in their BDWM* as my mother calls them speeding far too fast. I got so fed up and couldn't help wonder how they would feel if I drove at speed like that past their children!

It really made me despair of other people and their sudden rush to be in places. I always pass slow & wide & encourage all my friends & family to. It doesn't take much time off your journey does it?!

(*BDWM - Big D!ck W@nk Mobiles!)
 
I have to say that in my experience young men are the best car drivers for slowing down...even the boy racers...they obviously all have scarey, horsey girlfriends who have trained them. The worst is always middle aged men (sorry, no offence intended) in BMWs, Volvos, Saabs with tinted windows (salesmen/business types).
Can I also say how important it is to acknowledge good drivers too?
 
We had a similar incident not very long ago, except we were in a horse drawn vehicle, so there was even less room to be overtaken. Hubby signalled to tell the vehicle behind to wait, he ignored hubby and so nearly had a head-on collision right next to us.
Peter, as far as I am aware, the BHS are doing nothing for Carriage Drivers. Would you be so kind as to advise whether this is correct, and if not, why not? Any advise would be appreciated.Thanks.
 
Dear Donkeymad

You will notice that in my posts I always say horseriders and carridge drivers or horse drawn vehicles. This is why when I am claiming a route or creating a new one I always try to go for restricted byeway rather than bridleway as a restricted byeway can be used by horseriders, carridge drivers or horse drawn vehicles.

The other advantage of restricted byeways is that they can not be ploughed up unlike bridleways which can be plkoughed up if they go accross a field.

We do need more carridge drivers to join the BHS and support our access work. So please join.
 
i have to disagree with nepenthe.......i come from a town in dorset with lots of chavvy young boy racers are the worst for not slowing down! well in my area they are anyway. they think its funny if they see a horse scared, and even shout things out to me like 'you can ride me if you like!' or something along those lines.......

........also men in vans are particularly bad as well. they have no clue. i find elderly drivers are the best. but then i suppose they drive slowly anyway! hehehe
 
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