horse and carriage rear ended in Southern Pines area - WoW!

[Drive_NJ]

A friend sent me this article from online news
who was involved? Pat and Joe Belskie and her Polish driving ponies

Beware of Careless Drivers

Diane McKay Hoofbeats Coordinator
Aug 6, 2016

Hikers, riders and cyclists fall victim all too often to hurried or distracted drivers; it happened right here outside Whispering Pines on Feb. 1 — to a horse and rider. On this past Monday evening, Aug. 1, it happened again.

Moore Country Driving Club member Pat Belskie and her Polish ponies were finishing up a lovely drive, just about to turn into her driveway of her farm, when they were rear-ended. She is lucky. She was released from the emergency room that night; she is beaten, not broken. Her ponies are physically OK, but one is pretty distressed. Her beautiful, expensive carriage is totaled.

The driver, terribly shaken and upset, stopped immediately and came to her aid. He tried to help her best that he could after calling 911. Again, she was lucky; she was thrown to the right, into the dirt shoulder, instead of to the left and into the pavement.

Any plans for driving and competing for the rest of the year are now out. She doesn’t understand how the driver ran right into the back of her instead of veering around. The road is plenty wide; she had her caution lights and triangle on the back of the carriage. How could you not see unless your eyes were closed? She is reliving it over and over, the terrible screech, the crash …

Long, flat roads such as Ashmont, Youngs, Lake Bay and many more have become runways — and what can be done about the individuals who just don’t care about anything but themselves? It’s inevitable that you have to cross or drive on them for a short time. It’s unnerving and can take some of the joy out of your ride or drive.

When you are out and about with your animal, be even more cautious and careful than you already are. Only some people will change — many will not

[goodhors]

That is terrible news! I am glad she was not hurt worse.

Not sure if “being more visible” is possible with bright vests, flags on vehicles instead of relying only on triangles. I personally don’t rely on triangles as a good warning device. The color and shape are hard to gauge distance or speed from when approaching from the rear. We have numerous farm equipment accidents where cars hit them on the road moving between fields. As big as the equipment is, drivers STILL don’t slow down approaching, front or rear.

She went an extra step with flashing lights, and who knows how many times the lights DID do their job alerting car to her presence and avoided as accident? You can only do your best with being visible. Car drivers need to be doing their job of safe driving too.

We wear vests like roadworkers, lime green with orange and reflective stripes. Carriage has reflective triangles, two orange bike flags. Horses have lime reflective wrapping on the yoke of pole and harness sides. That is quite visible.

I have added a bike flag extending to the left about 3ft to prevent cars coming too close to the vehicle in passing. Some cars want to straddle rhe line! They will scratch the side of car now on the flag getting too close. Also have to be careful of car coming back right too soon, they will clip the horse/s. We are so long that cutting in is more noticeable with their hurry to pass, avoid car approaching in the other lane. But it happens with no other traffic too, no checking that they have completely cleared us before pulling back into the lane. “No horse in the side window means i am past them to move over”. NOT TRUE. Sloppy driving skills there, hoping they do finally hit a bigger car that won’t get knocked off the road as they “learn the lesson about passing in a clear distance”.

No governing agency seems able to slow auto drivers to even speed limit speeds, let alone stop the constant phone use by everyone driving. No solution except some technology that killed phone use while cars are turned on. That will not happen.

[Stonewall]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/50468270@N00/15971435795/in/dateposted-public/

Tall and flappy might help.

[goodhors]

[QUOTE=Stonewall;8791057]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50468270@N00/15971435795/in/dateposted-public/

Tall and flappy might help.[/QUOTE]

This is what you hope to get in being visible with bike flag uses. Flag moves almost constantly, attracting a follower’s eye, hoping they ACTUALLY SEE you to avoid hitting you. Humans are predators so flag motion catches their attention better, for a closer look at that motion point.

Problems happen when car driver STILL does not slow down.

[Ashemont]

Carriage accident

Definitely a scary experience! It was just after sunset. The road in front of our farm is a two lane that is flat and straight with wide shoulders. There was no other traffic. I had a large reflective slow-moving warning triangle plus rear reflectors on my carriage. And I was right under a yellow DOT horse warning sign! The driver of the car said he just didn’t see me - but at least he stopped and rendered assistance.

My lovely Kutzmann Fox marathon carriage is a wreck but thanks to good engineering and strong Italian steel it protected the ponies and me from serious damage. We were all banged up and bruised, but no one was broken. My one pony is nervous and I won’t compete her anymore - leaving me with 1/2 of a pair. It took me five different tries to get a pony to match Maggie and then I spent 5 years working with the pair. Not something that can easily be replaced.However it could’ve been so much worse!

So I’m left waiting months to get a new carriage and harness, and I don’t know how long it will take to find another pair of pony mares eager to do CDEs.

[StormyDay]

We were promised more police patrols to stop the wreckless drivers… However I have not seen a single patrol car on lakebay or youngs. Have you seen any, Ashmont? I would hope they would especially keep more patrols where you are!
Just a few days ago I came across people racing their cars on lakebay, which for those of you not familiar with the area is lined with horse farms. We are having some serious issues here with uninformed or just plain stupid drivers.
Glad you are okay Pat, but I’m sorry to hear that your horses are not fairing as well.

[Ashemont]

I’m in Hoke County. We spoke with the Sheriff’s Department and the roads are actually the Highway Patrol’s responsibility. However Hoke does have a 4 man traffic team and now that they are aware of the problem they are patrolling Ashemont, Army and Calloway roads more frequently.

I heard that Moore County Sheriff’s Department was doing saturated patrolling on Youngs Road and the first day they did so they caught 8 people going in excess of 15 mph over the limit. I can’t verify this as I never drive in your area.

We did have motorcycles racing on Ashemont a couple of months ago - actual bike against bike racing with folks along the sides of the road in their pickups and lawn chairs with beer kegs cheering them on! A call to 911 brought the Highway Patrol but everyone had vanished. It seems they have scanners and as soon as they heard the call go out they vamoosed! We now have cell phone numbers to call if it reoccurs.

[StormyDay]

Wow, that is scary for both the motorcyclists and anyone who might have been with their horses in the area!

[Ashemont]

Yep it was REALLY bad! My two granddaughters, ages 6 and 9, had just finished their lessons at the neighbor’s and my daughter and I were riding home with them. We heard the bikers coming and we all quickly dismounted and hung onto the reins. The horses were saints but still a bit jumpy. The racers never slowed down as we ducked back into my neighbor’s farm. Even after we called 911 and the racers and fans had all disappeared we still had to lead the horses home as they were very nervous.

[StormyDay]

Wow that really is terrible. People are just so stupid.

[goodhors]

Ashemont, thanks for checking in to tell us about the accident. Sounds like a terrible experience. Especially with the ponies being so traumatized. Hope you are feeling better with some time passing to aid in healing yourself and the ponies.

We have used CDs with noise in helping the young horses get used to sounds of all kinds. We let it run on repeat play while they are stalled, gradually increasing volume over time until very loud. Maybe something like that would help the ponies work thru the problem. Our CDs are from the Spookless folks, quite a variety of noises on them. The Police training one has many sounds for road horses.

http://www.spookless.com/

We are really careful here, do everything possible to be REALLY visible. Not easy when folks come up on you so fast they have no time to react properly. They ignore speed limits all the time, so I watch the local authorities do their month end quota collecting out front and cheer them on! They use our big driveway end to turn around in or park, waiting for the law breakers. It will help for a week or two in slowing traffic some.

Our horses pasture next to the road, so hear the loud cars and motorcycles going by, doesn’t bother them. Great training for the road uses. Most folks are polite, just really horse ignorant. I would hate to be Amish, forced to travel on busy roads with those kinds of drivers! No one can bear to be slowed down, they pass us on a no-passing zone blind hill, in both directions! You can see steam out of their ears when forced to wait a bit while car in other lane passes, so then car behind us has a clear passing area.

I am considering contacting the local newspaper, they always want interesting stories. Maybe they could do one on Equines on the road, ridden and driven, dangers they present, horse reactions when frightened and how to be cautious driving around them. Hitting a horse is 100 times worse than hitting the local Whitetail Deer which are so common. Deer still injure and kill people at only 130 pounds going thru the windshield, tiny next to even a small horse if you hit one.

The road traffic and consideration have changed a great deal in the last 10 years for horses using the roads.

[walkers]

How do you know this drivers phone did not just ring, or ding or ping.(maybe talking on the phone?) Thats enough to distract the driver,all it takes is a second when your focus leaves the road to glance down at your phone . Sure we’ll never know but now that people text and talk and drive its even worse than drinking and driving or certainly just as bad. Yes accidents happen but when you rear end anyone ,much less a carriage you aren’t paying attention. So what if the “nice” person stopped to help, if they got distracted or they are just to impaired to be a decent driver, get off the road.
American laws are to accommodating, take their license away and save a life. That life might be yours or someone you love.
As to the bikes racing well I can’t write what I’d do about that…
Remember 30,000 people die on roads every year in the uS, the most dangerous thing you ever do is drive your car and because we won’t insist on getting the drunks off the road and the phones out of the cars. Oh yes deaths are up since we all got cell phones.