A petition calling for the Welsh Government to educate drivers on overtaking horses safely is nearing 1000 signatures.
Jo Lovell from Penarth (pictured above far left) said she was inspired to start the petition after her 13-year-old daughter was thrown off her horse when a car passed them at speed.
She says: “It knocked [my daughter’s] confidence…The driver didn’t even stop, didn’t even look back to see the consequences of what he’d done.”
Now she wants an annual campaign from the Welsh Government, similar to Drink and Drive Awareness campaigns, to get drivers to pass ‘Wide and Slow’.
Mrs Lovell says the campaign is necessary because “people don’t know what to do. Some people think ‘I’ll go fast to get past it’, other people think ‘I’ll beep to let you know that I’m there’ but those are all things that frighten the horses and cause really dangerous situations.”
Jo Lovelle from #Penarth has started a petition for more education on passing #horses. Her daughter was knocked off due to careless driving pic.twitter.com/aKtJ2IqlUp
— Sarah Gough (@sarahgoughy) February 14, 2017
She plans to get a couple of thousand signatures over the next year to “really show the Welsh Assembly that it’s an issue for a lot of people”.
The petition says:
“In more urban communities (e.g. the commuter belt around Cardiff), there is a volume of traffic using country lanes, either as a shortcut or main access route.
In other parts of Wales (e.g. Carmarthen and Pembrokeshire) there is an annual influx of holidaymakers with little experience of encountering horses on the roads.
The voice of equestrians is not being heard.”
There is also a UK wide petition lobbying the House of Lords to “make it law to pass wide and slow and abide by horse riders and signals”. It has nearly 100,000 signatures.
Since 2010 there’s been 146 road accidents in Wales reported to the British Horse Society.
