Horse talk
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Data passed on by the British Horse Society (BHS) resulted in mounted police patrols being carried out in the north of England in May, and more than 40 drivers being pulled over for passing the police horses too fast or too close.
Two mounted officers rode single file wearing plain yellow high-vis clothing. When a vehicle passed inappropriately, the officers radioed to colleagues from the Roads Policing Unit waiting on motorbikes further up the road. Drivers were stopped, told why and given advice on how to pass horses in line with the BHS’S Dead Slow campaign.
Two patrols took place in Wirral while a third was carried out in St Helens, north-east of Liverpool. The majority of stopped drivers were aged over 50 and more than 200 speeding offences were also recorded.
The data the police use comes from incidents reported to the BHS by riders when they are hacking on the road.
“It highlights that if riders report their incidents to us, we do do something about it,” said BHS director of safety Alan Hiscox.
“We need riders to report every single
The police work with data provided by the BHS to tackle drivers who drive dangerously around horses
incident, near miss and scenarios where they feel threatened to us, via our app [see box, top right] or website. This is the evidence we need to go to the police and work with them to make more areas safer for riders.”
Alan added that other police forces have carried out similar patrols after receiving evidence from the BHS, including in Scotland, Manchester, London and Cornwall. He said the patrols are “great news” for the ongoing campaign towards safer roads for riders.
“They were doing a similar campaign for cyclists and the BHS safety team contacted a couple of forces to see if they would do the same for horses. That was about three or four years ago,” said Alan.
“Sometimes, if they haven’t got any horses, they send out cyclists and when they pull a car over the police shares the BHS message about passing horses as well.”