Road Rage

here's one rider's story................

Read this riders close encounter with a rude motorist and let us know if anything similar has ever happened to you.

was out riding with my friend on her horse and we had nearly made it home when my horse, Darcy, lost a hind shoe. I jumped off and chucked the shoe in the hedge so that nothing else could tread on it/get punctures etc, and carried on leading Darcy home behind my friend's youngster.

My friend was still in front of me and we turned left up a steep piece of road towards home. This hill is on a slightly blind left hand bend/slope upwards and I could hear a van coming behind us, revving and crunching his gears to get up the hill at speed. I waved my arm up and down when he came in to view and he still came flying past us. I just put my hand up anyway as I thought that if I thanked him this time, he might just slow down next time. My friend just said: "Slow down please" as her youngster was leading. We were both wearing fluorescents, I might add.

The next thing we knew, the driver skids to a halt almost ploughing into my friend and her horse, Penny, who jumped sideways in panic and Darcy was going crazy while I am desperately trying to stop him leaping around as he was very frightened.

This man then leaned out of the driver's door of his van and screamed: "F- off, you effin riders are all the same, you all think you own the road." Shocked at his outburst and a little frightened, we said to the angry (white van driver) man that all we had asked him to do was slow down a little.

Then it started to get strange. He reeled off that we had been riding abreast, and I said that was impossible because I was leading Darcy behind Penny. Then he started screaming expletives at us, saying that we shouldn't even been on the road and went to drive off.

My friend said that we should cut down the bridleway a bit further up to get away from him. He skidded the van to halt again and he started harping on that we were swearing at him. Which we weren't, we were just planning to go a different way as we were getting quite scared. He then grabbed his digital camera from his van and started snapping pictures of the horses and us.

We told him that we would be contacting the police about his outburst and rode off down the bridleway (which luckily brings us out directly in front of our livery yard) reciting his number plate.

He then proceeded to say how he was going to put the pictures of us on the Internet to name and shame us. We repeated that we would be contacting the police about it all and carried on down the bridleway to go home, really shaken up. Lo and behold who was waiting for us at the other end of the bridleway? This man in his white van!

We were getting really worried and crossed the road in front of him and he threatened us again, saying he would be taking the pictures of us to the police himself and that he knew where our horses lived now! Another rider was just arriving on the yard and could see what was going on. The driver then drove off at speed.

We got into the actual yard area, and tied the horses up, unfortunately our yard owners were out, so we called the police on my friend's mobile and told them what had happened. They were brilliant and called to say that the man was to be formally cautioned and if anything happened again involving this man and other riders he would be arrested and charged.

We honestly weren't rude in the slightest, but I don't think anything that we said would have pacified this man. The police hinted that a similar occurrence had been reported in the next village down seven months ago, involving a white van!

Let us know if you have had any similar experiences by emailing webmaster@bhs.org.uk