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Cyclists and horses (licensed CC BY SA 2.0 on Flickr by Michael Podger)Drivers “surprised and happy” to see horses on the road – but “frustrated, angry, and anxious” when overtaking cyclists, new road rage study finds
Motorists are most likely to experience feelings of surprise or happiness when encountering and having to overtake horses and horse riders on the road – but anger, frustration, and anxiety when faced with the same situation involving a cyclist, a new study examining the role of mindfulness when passing vulnerable road users has found.
The research, carried out on behalf of the British Horse Society, also found that 80 per cent of drivers agree that motorists are held up by cyclists when in a rush, while seven out of ten drivers surveyed agreed that cyclists are unpredictable, can appear from nowhere, and don’t obey road rules.
Published last week, the Road Safety Trust-funded project was undertaken by David Crundall, Editha van Loon, and Katherine Bailey from Nottingham Trent University, and surveyed over 1,000 drivers on how they feel, think, and behave around vulnerable road users such as cyclists and horse riders in a bid “to better understand their emotions, attitudes, and behaviours”.
> Cycling UK and British Horse Society issue guidance to cyclists on how to overtake horses safely
As part of the study, the 1,006 drivers from across the UK who took part in the online questionnaire were asked how often they feel a range of emotions – including frustration, happiness, surprise, anger, contempt, and anxiety – when “faced with cyclists, horse riders, or motorcyclists in the road ahead”.
32 per cent of those surveyed reporting feeling frustrated towards cyclists “often” or “nearly always”. 20 per cent, meanwhile, reported the same frequencies of anxiety around cyclists, and 16 per cent said they were often or nearly always angry at people on bikes on the road.
In comparison, only two per cent said they were often or nearly always angry when faced with horses and horse riders on the road (though those behind the study noted that this still amounts to 24 of the 1,006 drivers surveyed, described as a “sizeable minority with extreme views”).
Over three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt frustration towards cyclists at least sometimes, with almost half experiencing anger occasionally. Under a quarter of respondents, meanwhile, said they never or almost never felt angry when passing a cyclist on the road.
The motorists were then asked to share how often they engage in risky or aggressive behaviour around vulnerable road users. 24 per cent said they shout or gesticulate at cyclists at least sometimes, with two per cent admitting that they frequently or almost always shout at cyclists.
Around a quarter of the drivers also said they sometimes follow cyclists at or less than a car’s length behind them (with around 15 per cent revealing that they frequently or almost always follow cyclists at close proximity), with roughly the same number admitting they leave people on bikes less than 1.5m space when passing. 40 per cent admitted overtaking cyclists at or above the speed limit for the road.
Between 20 and 30 per cent of drivers also said they sound their horn or rev their engine at cyclists before passing them.
Horses, however, appear to evoke much fewer instances of negative behaviour, with an average of 97 per cent saying they never engage in aggressive behaviour towards the animals and their riders on the road.
> Look out for horses — here's how to pass horse riders safely
Finally, when focusing on attitudes towards cyclists, 81 per cent said they strongly or somewhat agree that drivers may be in a rush and are held up by cyclists, while around 70 per cent agreed that cyclists are “unpredictable” and “can appear from nowhere”.
68 per cent also agreed with the statement that “cyclists don’t obey road rules” and around 55 per cent agreed that drivers may be stressed about something else and take it out on cyclists, that packs of leisure cyclists can be intimidating, and that cyclists “act arrogantly”.
Just under half (48 per cent) also strongly or somewhat concurred that cyclists should pay “road tax” (despite the fact it doesn’t exist) and 26 per cent agreed that cyclists “shouldn’t be on the roads”.
In their free-form text responses to the questionnaire, some drivers expressed annoyance that cyclists “are slowing down traffic”, with one noting that “I am often in a rush and with time deadlines to get somewhere, so the hold-up of staying behind a cyclist holds me up far too long”.
Road position and riding two-abreast also formed a significant portion of the responses, with some arguing that “commuting cyclists… ride in the middle of the road making it hard to pass” and that “cyclists are very rude and ride in the middle of the road so that you can’t overtake”.
“Recreational expert cyclists often ride deliberately next to each other to slow other [road] users down,” another respondent said.
Other responses were even more forthright, and included claims that cyclists – or “Lycra warriors”, as one respondent described them – “are selfish and dangerous and think they own the road at times” and are “arrogant arseholes”.
“When there is a cycle path and it’s not being used, we always shout ‘use the cycle path psychopath!’” one of the motorists added.
This data was subsequently assessed by mindfulness experts, with a group of drivers then treated to a four-week training intervention, where they were shown newly crafted scripted videos which aimed to tackle a lack of knowledge about unsafe passing behaviours by providing information on how to overtake vulnerable road users, provide persuasive arguments to reframe motorists’ attitudes towards cyclists, and offer mindfulness techniques to combat in-the-moment emotions such frustration and anger.
According to the report, the four videos had a positive effect on the attitudes and emotions, particularly concerning frustration, of the drivers towards cyclists, and that their intended future overtaking speeds have decreased, along with a decrease in their unsafe passing behaviours.
The motorists who took part in the online course also said the videos would be of great benefit for other drivers, reckoning that their knowledge, attitudes, and level of control when overtaking had improved, and that they would use the recommended safe passing and mindfulness techniques in practice.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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107 comments
My commuting bridleways are essential no matter the state, but there is a particular bridleway on my hour loop, so recreation/exercise that I avoid when wet as it is so properly horsy I believe there is a polo field next to it.
My morning commute uses a bridleway across common land that is also unfortunately a BOAT, and those green laners do far more damage than any number of horses could do.
That's a very good video. It covers a lot of important points.
I would be interested to see the location of the survey results. My guess is town and city dwellers are positive to horses but in the country cyclist are preferable.
As a cyclist and driver in the south west, I don't have an issue with cyclists or cycling, apart from old people in Peugeots who seem intent on killing me, but horse tend to be very slow and take up much more road space. On narrow twisty roads horses are certainly more risky and tend to get spooked when cycling past them, they don't hear bikes coming and jump when we pass.
I encounter a lot of horse riders locally too - on the road & off. I always make sure to call out to horse riders to alert them to my presence. A simple "Hi" or "morning!" seems to work well enough. Generally once they and the horse know you're there, things go pretty smoothly if give them the requisite amount of room & slow to a reasonable speed. On properly narrow roads I'll just wait a safe distance back from them if there's genuinely no safe way to overtake. Or wait for the rider to find a safe spot to pull up & allow a pass.
If a horse is particularly skittish, the rider will let you know (& you can adapt accordingly) - after all it's not in their interests to be thrown off.
I also find that horse riders are far more likely to be appreciative of people taking care around them than pedestrians or motorists, very rare to slow/stop/ride on the other side of the road for them and not get thanks.
Which is why you should slow down to walking pace a good 20 or 30 yards back and call out to the rider "Wave me through when you're ready." This gives them a chance to prepare their horse for the overtake and if you ride through slowly, right over to the other side of the road if feasible, it's very unlikely that the horse will be spooked.
I always call out when approaching from behind and pass wide, but one time I had a guy berate me for not talking as I approached his horse. I was surprised because I was approaching from the front and he and the horse could both see me.
It would seem quite obvious to me, that if he wished me to speak as well as the horse being able to see me, this is best achieved by asking a question (small talk not pub quiz, but we can discuss the speed of laden sparrows if it helps) rather than snapping "well say something"
I'd have been tempted to say something alright.
I experienced something similar on Epsom Downs. To the unfamilar, this is a massive open space that horses can roam around on but us cyclists are supposed to stick to the marked paths. I encountered a horse & rider the other day, approaching from in front on the main path. So, I pulled over to one side, a good few metres off the path & prepared to offer a sunny "good evening". However, the rider looked down her nose at me (got the distinct impression she thought I was off to rob her local post office - but that may be a me problem) and spat out "No. Further." One would proffer that there may have been better opening gambits in that situation.
To be fair, horseists are like any other group. Most of them are lovely people, but some of them are just arseholes/having a bad day/taking a previous bad encounter with a #bloodycyclist out on you.
I find the horseists on Epsom Downs to be a special case in terms of snottiness and aggression towards cyclists. I think it's probably because many of the riders are professionals – stable lads/lasses, trainers, jockeys etc and they (wrongly) regard the downs as their professional workplace where pedestrians and cyclists are interlopers. Definitely more problems with horses around that area than in many other parts of the Surrey countryside.
I don't disagree. Most of the more negative encounters I've had locally have been up there. They're not all bad though. Once whilst riding back towards Langley Vale from Headley (road ride this one) there was a small procession of race horses crossing the road up by Shepherd's Walk. I came to a halt & waited a good 20-30 metres away whilst they crossed - no great drama.
As the last animal & it's
gnomejockey made its way off the road, I clipped back in & slowly started off again. Only to be instantly greeted by some furious arm waving and shouting from the jockey in question because I was apparently too close and going to spook the horse. The speed of his reaction told me that he was just spoiling for an excuse to have a go at me (cyclist innit).The horse itself looked totally unbothered (possibly stoned). The jockey on the nag in front of my new friend turned around, looked at me, looked back at his angry mate, looked puzzled, asked the shouty one what the problem was (pointing out that I was still some way off) & shrugged at me. I just had to laugh at him. It actually brightened my ride up a bit.
The best bit of absurdity I've come across up there didn't happen to me but to a friend: he was following an open horsebox, one of those ones where the horses can look out the back, off the downs down towards Epsom. The driver was gesticulating out of the window at my friend, who couldn't work out what he was doing wrong. When they got to a traffic light the driver got out in a rage and told my friend that he should turn his flashing daylight running front light off "Because it will scare my horses." He was asked why if that was the case the horses (who didn't seem at all bothered) didn't get spooked by daylight running lights or indicators on cars, and furthermore if he thought the horses would be spooked by such things why didn't he cover the back of the box or put them in the other way round so they couldn't see out. The answer, coming from someone who expected other people to turn off a safety device for the supposed annoyance it was causing his horses, was classic: "It's not my job to accommodate you, you think you own the bloody road."
They can't really help it, unless you're on an ordinary and they're on a Shetland pony...
It's when the horse looks down its nose at you, that's real disdain... (or you're just about to get blasted with a sneeze, leaving you looking like you've had an encounter with a Ghostbusters slimer).
Having just finished Ed Yong's excellent book about animal senses, I feel that I must pick you up on the point that horses, being prey animals, have eyes on the side of their heads giving them a visual umwelt of over 300 degrees. So no looking down their noses, more alongside...
You have a point there - all I know is it doesn't impede them shotgun-sighting their nose and giving you both barrels...
This vid springs to mind. For goat, substitute cyclist, lycra-lout or horsey type
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVwnAyw6m0Y
Incredible. And they sh1t on the roads! Maybe we should try a bit of that too then to get the drivers looking at us with affection? That or neighing loudly.
cocnuts, it's all about the coconuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XPnIUtcANg
Like all cyclists i have been on the receiving end of lots of bad driving, but this survey does not reflect my personal experience. Of course we can never know what the drivers we are sharing the road with are actually thinking, but ...
"24 per cent said they shout or gesticulate at cyclists at least sometimes, with two per cent admitting that they frequently or almost always shout at cyclists."
This is just not true for me, two percent of motorists do not shout or gesticulate at me and I suspect this is the samefor cyclists in general.
My village recently had a police "Close Pass Operation" and the Police Facebook page got more comments from Horse riders than cyclists.
"Can you do this for people on horseback please ?! I’ve been in Cheshire for years now and rarely a car even slows down for us"
"The drivers on the Cheshire roads are horrendous and so many don’t slow down for horse riders . Many too seem to resent us being on the roads are not aware of the rules regarding passing horse riders"
150 cyclists are killed each year by drivers, zero horse riders. Nuff said.
In point of fact, three horse riders were killed on UK roads in 2023, with 66 horses also killed (source: Horse & Hound). Figures don't seem to exist for the number of people riding horses on the road or their mileage but empirical observation suggests that it is a very considerably smaller number (e.g. cycling in Surrey and Kent on a weekend I would expect to see between five and ten horses out on the roads and maybe a hundred or more cyclists in a three hour ride).
I've watched drivers pass me close, and then move out and slow down for the horse ahead.
Also, my most terrifying close passes have all been horse boxes, so clearly horseists don't believe close passing is a problem.
I have also had many bad experiences with horse boxes.
I put it down to the fact that the drivers are reluctant to make sudden changes in speed or direction because they want to protect their prescious cargo. Horses before cyclists!
Would those be horse trailers attached to a car, or horse boxes that are purpose built lorries?
I'm guessing that people who rarely use a vehicle are more stressed by that so not thinking about the wider picture as they should.
Since lorries are HGV and require a specific licence, I'd expect greater competence and consideration (Hierarchy of Responsibility)
both types, the trailers are worse though as it doesn't appear to occur to the horse lovers that the trailer is wider than the car and they need to give more room.
"Also, my most terrifying close passes have all been horse boxes, so clearly horseists don't believe close passing is a problem."
This. Living near the New Forest / rural Hampshire I've had terrifyingly close passes from cars towing horse boxes on any number of occassions. Often at speed. I've never bee able to get my head round it.
Topically twitter has this
https://x.com/owdrider/status/1802711042792833050
Comments are the usual lack of understanding of the video, the HC and poor observation.
For those not on twitter cyclist overtakes 2 horse riders whilst driver tailgates and then close passes cyclist. Rear view camera shows it all very well.
If horses with riders were as prevalent as cyclists I would be pretty certain what the outcome would be when it comes to the right wing press.
With the reaction of drivers I am not surprised basically the average driver is that average 5 out of 10 which is pretty crap when it comes to competency. They can get in the car , start it , stop it ( some times ) and maybe grasp some of the fundamentals of driving and how they should behave. Personally with the advent of online accessibility we should now stipulate every 10 years a re test that reviews the HC and hazard perception fail it 3 times you lose your license and you are out with a driving instructor or something along those lines?🤷
The safest form of transport, Aviation, has a safety first mantra so that aircraft operators must know the aircraft (certification on Type) and must be Current with key procedures eg take off, landing.
Thus a bumpy landing is likely to be manual so that the pilot or first officer keeps their currency up. The old Instrument Landing System radio approach is augmented with GNSS and INS for super smooth automatic landing. The so called glass cockpit aircraft have inbuilt physics modelling to ensure that all flight procedures are within the rated flight envelope. Clear air turbulence somewhat excepted!
So if there were a genuine commitment to road safety, there must be regular education and testing along with currency obligations.
The check flight is how pilots verify their lapsed currency with an instructor to observe and improve their performance.
Fly Safe! A pilot..
It's hard to believe this stuff, it seems everybody has it in for cyclists.
I have a horse riding friend who hates cyclists but has no problem with motorists. This DESPITE 70 to 80 horses killed every year by motorised vehicles!
I can't find even one instance of a horse being killed by a cyclist.
I really wonder if there's a jealousy aspect at work here. All these fit cyclists, getting the exercise, no fuel to pay for etc etc.
Yeah, I think its a perception thing, they have just judged us as self righteous fit as a butchers dog types. That and its good sport to some of them.
My rear facing camera helps with the close passes and the police getting in touch with them.
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