You were lucky, Neil, thank goodness. Increasingly people who are driving are not aware of what's on the road, too many are distracted by their devices, and also the modern fully electronically equipped car itself offers a lot of things (GPS, radio, AC etc) which one activates with touch screens, inviting the driver to turn the eyes away from the road for a moment. And all this applies not only to young and inexperienced drivers but to older ones as well.


5 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Glad to hear all worked out OK. We've had a few close calls. My worst was last December. Every holiday season, we do wagon rides twice a week through a city contract. We are the only licensed carriage company in the city, and it's a good, reliable, repeat contract with good pay during our farm's off season, even if it is also the most stressful of events we do. The city (our capital, so pretty busy) actually shuts down a one-way road in the downtown area so that our wagon can go the "wrong" way in order to offer the route the city wants. This works well, and gives a small stretch of road where the horses (and I) can relax for a moment with no traffic to worry about. Usually. Last year, on 2 separate occasions, cars chose to intentionally drive around the very obvious barriers and "Do Not Enter" signs, and I found myself traveling head-on towards these cars. One, in particular scared the daylights out of me, as she came around the barrier, and then took the opportunity to look down at her phone. She never saw me coming. I didn't know I could yell that loud! I screamed to get her attention, and thankfully it worked. She slammed on the brakes, and then went around us. I think I scared every rider on the wagon and every pedestrian within a 3 block radius with that yell, but I was dead serious and my passengers and horses' lives depended on it! After that, we managed to get a deputy to position his car in that area, which stopped the behavior. This is a contract that I would like to replace with safer work in the future, but until that happens, I just have to remain on high alert at all times! I never trust vehicles!


5 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum