DeskJockey wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:52 pm
Orange Cola wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm
Speaking from experience writing doesn’t do anything. Firstly, those who do slow down are too busy driving the car to sit and read what at best is a slightly scrumpled up bit of writing on a high vis, secondly those who don’t car will fly past anyway.
The best deterrent is being out in numbers and limiting the amount of time spent on busy roads and have a camera for when it does go wrong (yes, you can get the equivalent of a dash cam for horses). More and more people think horses are toys for the elitist groups that have no place on our roads so it’s currently a weird transition phase from a few people being dicks because it’s a horse to quite a few people being dicks because they think they can ‘get one up on the establishment’.
Seriously? How do you not see the human on top of the very large animal and think: best be decent and slow down/stop, turn my lights off and wait? Even if you care not one jot for rider and horse, that's some serious damage to your car (if you're that shallow a human). I sincerely hope you're exaggerating for the sake of humanity.
Edit: obviously don't mean OC.
People do see the horse and riders regardless of whether they have a high vis on with some nice words on them or not so I personally think words are pointless. But to be clear the rest of the high vis stuff is fine. They react negatively based on the presence of the horse and rider, not because the words on the high vis are not nice. I’d spend the money on a decent camera instead.
I also have the pleasure of reading the local Facebook group of a place where I spend a fair amount of my life (riding horses being one of those activities) there is a large horse community presence and the amount of people who spout hate towards horses on there has grown a lot over the years. The community used to like horses and that’s clearly changed over the past decade or so. The amusing posts are about the horse droppings, there’s the occasional ones about seeing horses out and about in a nice way. Worryingly when a post starts on their presence on the roads it seems to gain a lot of support, people questioning why they should slow down and pass wide; to them if the horse is dangerous it shouldn’t be there on the roads at all and the riders are just asking for it and there are a growing number who think they don’t deserve right of way on a road. Lots of comments about horse riders getting away without paying tax or insurance and how that’s ‘clearly’ one rule for them and another for us who can’t afford such affluent toys etc. Claims they know of people in power in the local area who ride horses on the roads so they’ll never be arrested for not paying tax/insurance/violating road traffic rules etc. It’s staggering really.
Beyond that there’s plenty of videos being posted of riders with cameras where people don’t slow down or they deliberately try and antagonise the horse and rider. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a horse and car crash but it’s pretty grim, it seems a lot of the aggressive drivers don’t realise that until it’s too late. Fortunately if you capture an aggressor on camera the police do seem to be well up for going round to their house and having a word with them or even taking it further.
However in saying that I don’t think I’ve ever been out riding and a motorist has come round a bend or something, been caught off guard not expecting to see a horse, who hasn’t then slowed with a wave.
TL;DR: save your money and buy a decent camera instead.
, my wife has been looking at high-vis wear for riders.
. She just wears a standard high-vis with no writing on it.
