Horse riders in the Salford area say they feel unsafe and unwelcome on the roads following a spate of incidents.
Kate Leigh, a horse owner who rides in an area of Salford, was involved in an accident caused by drivers not allowing her to cross for ten minutes.
She said: “An HGV whizzed passed us and I would say it was doing about 50 miles an hour.
“My horse Eden just reared up in the middle of the road, fell over backwards and landed on top of me. The truck drove off.
“Passers-by had to shut down the road , he was on the floor. I was on the floor and I couldn’t get back up.”
The accident left both Kate and Eden with injuries that Kate is still recovering from and awaiting scans to see if she has fractured her back almost a year later.
She described Eden’s injuries: “He cut all his legs open, and he was just absolutely petrified and I just think that if cars were more considerate, stopped or slowed down it would make a big difference.
“If I can help it I will not ride on the road, drivers drive too close and too quickly to you.”
Another Salford rider who has her horses in the Swinton area is Kay Louise, a devoted horse rider and mother who shared some of the experiences she had on the road.
One of the most upsetting ones that took place before she was in Salford was in the Radcliffe area that involved her Shetland being hit by a car.
“A yellow car came flying towards us, I was waving it to slow down, it had a loud exhaust system on it, the driver put his foot down.
“The pony spins as the noise is coming towards her and as she spins, her bum swings out. He’s full on hit her on her back end, literally she left the floor and he just sped off.
“He knew he’d hit her and he just drove off.”
The incident was very traumatic, but both Kay and her Shetland pony were uninjured.
On Halloween night the stables organises a ride where everyone dresses up and goes out in a big group and Kay described an incident with a bus.
She said: “I’ve walked across and I can see this bus, it’s ages away, so I’m waving my whip letting him know we are in the road.
“And at one point I was like I need to jump because this bus is going to hit me, I genuinely thought that this bus was going to hit me.
“He braked, screeched and came to a halt about 3ft away from me.”
Kay said she had to jump in the way to protect her children on their ponies.
Despite all the incidents she has had on the road Kay doesn’t completely blame drivers.
She said: “I don’t think that drivers are taught how to safely pass horses, especially newer drivers.
“I think if drivers were properly taught and shown how to pass horses safely there wouldn’t be as many accidents.”
Kay once encountered a driver who said they didn’t understand how to pass a horse and was too close to a pony’s back legs as she was turning into a school.
She rolled her window down and started swearing, saying she didn’t know what to do around horses.
Kay advised anyone who isn’t sure what to do around horses to never get too close to the animal.
She said: “You don’t have to be an equestrian to know that horses kick, it’s like the unwritten rule of you don’t stroke a strange dog you don’t know.”
In the area where Kay rides, many drivers are uneducated or unsure of how to correctly pass a horse, to show this we set up a way to show the correct distance that cars should pass horses.
We placed a white marker just below the two metres mark, which is the legal amount of space required to give a horse on the road.
The British Horse Society in 2022 said that there were over 3,552 road incidents involving horses reported to the society’s app, in which 68 horses died, and 125 horses and 139 people were injured.
Eighty-two per cent of incidents occurred because a vehicle passed by too close to the horse and 78% of incidents occurred because a vehicle passed by too quickly.
Within the Northwest region, a total of 370 incidents were reported to the BHS in 2022.
This is just over one incident a day, and a 10% increase since 2021.
Greater Manchester had 110 incidents, Lancashire was the worst affected with 111 incidents, and Cheshire had103.
How to safely pass a horse on the road
To understand or brush up on the correct way to pass a horse on the road you can visit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/road-users-requiring-extra-care-204-to-225
Or for more details, you can visit https://www.bhs.org.uk/go-riding/riding-out-hacking/riding-on-roads/advice-for-motorists/ .
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