Horses Belong in Traffic!

Yesterday, a driver clipped a horse in traffic and fled from the scene while the rider was busy calming the animal down. That pisses me off. But what pisses me off even more is the comments on the newspaper website reporting about it (in Danish).

A number of people are expressing their rather justified outrage that a driver would hit someone in traffic and then simply drive away at high speed, hoping to get away with it. Surprisingly, a couple of people are stating that horses don’t belong in traffic anyway.

Newsflash: Horses do belong in traffic. Horses were in traffic since pretty much forever. Horses are legally considered the equivalent of cars in traffic, meaning that they have to follow the same laws as drivers do. We don’t get to ride on the sidewalk, safely out of the way of speeding or honking drivers. Most of us would love it if we were allowed to do that, because a lot of car owners drive without any responsibility whatsoever, honking at us loudly or even throwing soda cans at the horse through the car windows.

Maybe you’re scared of horses, or you just plain don’t like them. That’s fair. But what’s not fair is telling me to get off the road with my horse because I have just as much right to be there as you do, and you have no more right to harass or endanger me than you have to harrass or endanger a cyclist, a pedestrian, or a child playing in the street.

Deal with it. Like an adult. Traffic laws exist for a reason.

Tell us what you think!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.