LEADING OF HORSES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 March 1926, Page 15

LEADING OF HORSES.

USE OF WRONG SIDE OF ROAD,

The question of leading a horse on a highway has been discussed many times, and it has always been considered a right practise for the horseman leading to sec that he is between the led horse and the traffic. A case has just been decided at Hamilton by Mr. W. Wilson, S.M., in which a man was charged with being the rider of a horse and leading a brood mare on the HamiltonOhaupo road, and meeting a vehicle failed to keep on his correct side of the road. A fine was inflicted, and in the course of an interesting judgment the magistrate said, inter alia:— ‘ ‘ It is a well established law that one using the highway may choose any part of it in the absence of other traffic, and the statutory 'rule of the road' (to keep to the left in meeting and pass to the right in overtaking) is only for the purpose of allowing passage. “In the present case it was proved that the safest course to adopt when leading horses is to keep well over on the right-hand, or off side, and that if a horse be lead on the left-hand side of the road danger may arise from the led horse being next to the passing traffic, and likely to become beyond control. Although that phase of the law does not appear to have received consideration in our Supreme Court it has been commented upon in the Scotch case of Umphray v. Ganson, 1917, S.C., 371, where Lord M'Kenzic stated that it is desirable that in all cases the person leading the horse should be between the horse and the motor. In Roberts and Gibb on 'Collisions on Land’ (1915), at page 85, the question is stated to be still open for consideration, whether a motor-ear should, in over-

taking, pass a led horse on the off side or should slow down and allow the horse to be led to the off side. “Lord Kenyon had stated, in speaking of the rule of the road, that 'in driving at night the rule ought to be strictly adhered to and never departed from, as it is the only mode by which accidents can be avoided.’ That ruling, although given in 1799, appears to be most wise in considering present-day motor traffic on unlighted country roads, especially in the case of horsemen who carry no lights.” Mr. Wilson convicted tire defendant of failing to discharge his duty of keeping to the left when meeting a vehicle.