605 comments Add a comment
This is very simple! All horse riders/owners on the roads are not stuck up, posh and snobby. In fact the majority of us work really hard to afford what we do and go without other things so we can own or ride a horse.
I understand that encountering horses on the road can be tiresome and may take up much needed time to pass them safely, and then to not be thanked by a rider is just galling, but there are rude people in all walks of life, drivers often witness other drivers being inconsiderate, pedestrians stepping out in front of them, drivers doing dangerous things like drink driving or speeding, but everyone is not tarred with the same brush. There is nothing more frightening than having your stirrup whipped out from underneath you by a wing mirror!
"You shouldn't ride your horse on the road if you can't control it!..."
Please drivers, consider that when a horse rider asks you to stop or slow down it is not because we want to be awkward, we have a very good reason, like we can see over the hedge and can see a car coming the other way, or some prat on the pavement thinks it's funny to wave a plastic bag in the horses face and we know it is going cause an issue. And the cry of "You shouldn't ride your horse on the road if you can't control it!" goes up, very true but consider this, has your dog ever slipped it's collar and run off? Just once? Has your child ever done anything like run away for a bit of fun and get too near the road? Your cat never had a near miss dashing across the road? These are all unpredictable events, as are most incidents that happen with horses. But have you ever wanted kids, dogs and cats banned from the roads? Do you refuse to slow down when a child is too near the road? Or a dog is loose running down the road?
Just because we are on horses doesn't mean we are automatically rude, inconsiderate and stuck up! The next time you sigh and moan because there are horses in front of you please remember that the person on that horse is probably just as hardworking as you, on just as tight a schedule and could be the person who serves you at the supermarket, or looks after you elderly relative for a pittance to afford a sport we love! We are only asking that we can be safe and not have our lives put in danger because people are too busy to slow down or have stereotyped horse riders as 'Hooray Henry's'. We have a right to use the roads, but more so, we have a right to be safe and so do our horses!
Leave a comment
J mentions wrong road signals - that is a separate argument - if you follow that to its conclusion you would not have any horses for anyone.
Also, yes, bring back nosebags.
get it down the M1. you be able to get a good gallop up there.
Nope a horse drawn carriage for me, I like to leave a trail of **** on the road for the peasants to pick up and put on their flowers etc.
If it wasn't for me how would these poor people survive? they cannot afford fertilizer.
Also the clip-clop of hooves on the road brings much merriment to the masses of people who do not possess a musical instrument.
That's one more horse rescued from the lasagna!
alot of people have double standards.
have you noticed all the flooding etc has started happening since we have been looking after the planet?
over 100 years ago everyone had a coal fire and every city full of smog, how often do you see smog in uk cities, except for london?
Would you p*ss in a bowl of soup?
Yet we allow cars to pollute the very air we breath, how many cases of lung cancer?
Cars kill in many ways, not just by impact.
The BMJ want driving curbed, because of the adverse effects of external costs on the population.
http://bma.org.uk/transport
Most bullies are rather stupid too, otherwise they would realise that horse-riders, pedestrians and cyclists too have a right to be on the road. Only motorists are required to show a Vehicle Excise Duty disk to have their vehicle on the road. IIRC, the mandatory insurance came about because of the mayhem that resulted from bad drivers, as did the driving licence.
The really filthy beasts are drivers (thank you 'jobby'), motor vehicles chuck-out noxious gaseous and particulate pollution that kills tens of thousands of people each year, one estimate is for 35,000 deaths per year. If that isn't 'filthy', I don't know what is.
Then there's the noise which also kills.
Then some ignorant fool will trot-out the road-tax argument. Let's make it perfectly clear, motorists do not subsidise everyone else! Everyone else is subsidising motorists!
Despite paying Vehicle Excise Duty and fuel-duty, every registered vehicle in the UK is subsidised by just over £1710 every year, (average, based upon 1 Euro=£0.85, 2008 figures, 2012 report), that means that driving is hugely subsidised. Non-drivers are being ripped-off. This subsidy averages-out at ~£200 per 1000 miles is due to external costs, which are incurred by driving, but passed-on to society and paid by the taxpayer.
The True Costs of Automobility: External Costs of Cars
Overview on existing estimates in EU-27
Final Report
TU Dresden
Chair of Transport Ecology
Prof. Dr. Ing. Udo J. Becker
Thilo Becker
Julia Gerlach
Dresden, October 12th, 2012
GIYF
Carlos