British Horse Society still driving message to slow down for horse despite Highway Code changes

It came off the back of a Dead Slow campaign that BHS had been running in response to collisions and incidents between vehicles and horses on the country’s public roads.

This year, the Safety Team have been promoting the Dead Slow messaging, with the aim of reducing the number of incidents involving horses, carriage drivers and riders on the road. They have been reaching motorists at Car Fest, the NEC Caravan, Camping & Motorhome Show.

As BHS moves into 2024, it is their aim to create more awareness of the guidelines as their time at these shows revealed that only 15 per cent of drivers they talked to knew about the Highway Code changes.

Alan Hiscox, director of safety at BHS said: “The awareness could have been made a lot more, The Department of Transport will say they put a lot of effort into communication but our evidence is very few (people knew about the change)

“A lot of people said it was to do with cyclists, but when you talk about the equestrian element they had no idea. It is worrying that 85 per cent of drivers are unaware of these changes and their significance.

“Before it said pass wide and slow but that was open to interpretation, this is a specific guide.”

Next year the BHS will be working with driving instructors and the National Road Safety conference to get the message out.

Our focus for 2024 is to get these changes out to more and more drivers and to reduce incidents between horses and vehicles.

In 2021, there were 308 reported incidents between horses and vehicles on Yorkshire’s roads and one horse fatality as a result.

In 2022 there were 324 incidents in Yorkshire and three horses were killed as a result.

Across England, 3,552 incidents were reported to BHS, 69 horses were killed on the roads in 2022, that is a 21 per cent increase compared to 2021, and 125 were injured.

In 2022, the BHS reported that 82 per cent of road incidents involving horses occurred because a vehicle passed by too closely to the horse and 78 per cent occurred because a vehicle passed by too quickly.

With the figures for 2023 still being collated it is not known what the results will be, but Mr Hiscox hopes the message is getting across.

He added that more people were reporting incidents via the Horse i app and encouraged equestrians to continue to do so as the BHS were feeding the information back to the authorities and it was making a difference.

He said: “It does not have to be a collision, it can be a close pass or a near miss.

“I think perhaps incidents are rising because people are aware of the recording system but I know that only one in five riders still report incidents to us because they think ‘what’s the point’ and nothing happens.

“But, I can say that they do happen and I was in Barnsley a few weeks ago to put posters up and around and they are areas where people have reported incidents. West and South Yorkshire Police have done close pass operations in the areas were incidents have been reported.

“It does have an effect. I don’t know what the figures for 2023 will be, but I hope that we will see an effect from the Dead Slow campaign and the Highway Code changes.”

The BHS worked for 18 months lobbying government and collaborating with Cycling UK, DVSA, Living Streets and the Department for Transport (DfT) to suggest much-needed Highway Code improvements and to represent equestrians in the review.

As of January 29 2022, the BHS’s Dead Slow messaging became incorporated within the Highway Code.

Meanwhile, West Yorkshire woman Grace Olson is lobbying Leeds City Council to introduce a pilot scheme ‘wellbeing zone’ in her village.

It would see a campaign to appeal to drivers to slow down when passing walkers, horse-riders and people in wheel-chairs on country lanes and making speed limits on some sections of rural roads 20mph.

The author was prompted to take action after a van almost hit her while she was out riding her horse.