PASS WIDE AND SLOW: WAIKATO HORSE RIDERS BATTLE FOR RECOGNITION AS VULNERABLE ROAD USERS
Road users come in all shapes and sizes - four-wheeled, two-wheeled, eight-wheeled, or, four-legged - the latter of which are especially vulnerable, Fiona Scott says.
Matamata resident Scott, 58, is raising awareness for horse riders as road users and has a key message for motorists: “We are legally allowed on the road and should be able to do so safely”.
To spread the word, Scott joined the worldwide movement Pass Wide and Slow, which runs an annual two-day riding event to educate drivers on how to pass horse riders.
This year, over 40 cities across New Zealand took part in last weekend’s event, including Taumarunui, Rotorua, and Hamilton.
On Saturday, Scott and six others started their hack from Ngahinapouri School, riding the sideroads and backroads for two hours. Scott told Waikato Herald the motorists they encountered were respectful and gave them space.
“We had courteous drivers but I suspect it was to do with the high-vis we were wearing that had ‘Pass Wide and Slow’ printed on our backs.”
However, Scott, who has trained in horseriding from the age of 14, said overall driver behaviour around horses had not improved a lot and she recently came across “some real rude people” in her area.
“I’ve been yelled at by a truck driver when I was trying to flag him down, I was crossing a railway line with my horse and someone came up behind us and passed me on the left-hand side dangerously,” she said.
Scott recently retired her 30-year-old horse Delta and was on her pony Molly, who is still getting familiar with the roads.
“I’m trying to deal with a horse that’s never seen a railway line before, she tried to jump sideways and there was a car real close to me ... it could’ve been an accident.
“People have just lost the ability to read an animal and go ‘Okay, we need to pause and wait’. People are too impatient these days.”
An experience that shocked her the most was when someone came up behind her and “tooted their horn”.
“That is the last thing you do with a horse: you don’t beep, don’t rev your engine, don’t speed by close because the smallest noises can set off a horse.
“Motorists don’t slow down, don’t move over, and just roar past you at over 100km/h ... a horse’s defence [mechanism] is fright or flight, so they’ll either freeze or bolt if that happens, and it can’t always be good.”
Scott said it was time to make a statement and urged fellow horse riders to back a petition to Parliament calling for horse riders to be formally recognised as ‘Vulnerable Road Users’ (VRU) in transport legislation and for them to be included in offroad pathways.
“We don’t need any more accidents. We need to be treated as vulnerable - like a cyclist. We are the same to them, a pedestrian, a dog-walker.
“It’s a battle as a horse rider ... cyclists get more and more done for them around the country, and horse riders have had next to zero.”
Scott said the petition would be handed into Parliament on October 14.
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.