Citation

Trump D, Parkin J. Safety Sci. 2020; 123: e104523.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2019.104523

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 2017, 78 equestrians were involved in road collisions involving personal injury in Great Britain, with 22 people being seriously injured and 61 being slightly injured. While the absolute numbers of collisions and injuries relating to horse-riding on the road is low, there is a need to more fully understand prevalent collision types. This paper investigates collisions in Devon, UK, over a period of seven years and ten months, and reports a national on-line survey with 1976 respondents. The majority of collisions in the collision record involve vehicles passing in the opposite direction (26 out of 74) and overtaking (22/74), with rear-end shunts being the next most prevalent collision type (14/74). Strikingly, a large proportion of vehicles, 80 out of 145, involved in 'collisions' with horses were reported not to have impacted the horse. Avoiding impact with a horse is not sufficient to avoid injury. Our exploration of these issues at the boundary of collisions and near-misses is of relevance to wider road safety research. Further, 79.1% (1563 out of 1976) of equestrians in the survey reported a near-miss, and 15.6% (309 out of 1976) reported a collision, with 7.7% reporting collisions involving personal injury. We conclude that drivers need to understand horse perception limitations, flight behaviours, and horse rider signals. Collision frequency and severity could be reduced with education-based initiatives. Equally, equestrians need to be skilled in communicating correctly with their horses and approaching drivers. These findings have implications for driver and rider training.

Language: en

Keywords

Equestrian; Ethology; Horse; Road collision