The 'Approaching a Horse' Road Rule

The strangest question has been posed to Queensland drivers about what to do if you encounter a horse on the road whilst driving.

YOU are driving along a road and come across a person riding a horse. The horse appears to be agitated by the sound of the car and the rider is having trouble getting the animal under control.

What do you do?

Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads posed this scenario on its Twitter feed to see who knew about this obscure rule and how to legally handle the situation.

It posted a picture of a person riding a horse while making a hand single to a car behind them.

The law states that if the driver ignores the rider’s signal of raising a hand and pointing to the horse and instead passes the “restive animal” they could incur a maximum penalty of 20 units or around $2611 in fines.

In order to avoid this fine, drivers must stop the car and “not move the vehicle until there is no reasonable likelihood that the noise of the motor, or the movement of the vehicle, will aggravate the restiveness of the horse”.

I had no idea that this was an actual law and had to be abided by or that the fine was so steep. It makes common sense that you would be courteous to the horse and its rider.

Most of the responders to the question were pretty responsible and had a reasonable answer, but that's not very interesting and I was most intrigued by those 'imaginative replies' posted to the question. Some of them included:

“Accelerate past the horse at full throttle in your ute making sure to scream obscenities at the rider and/or throw a beer bottle followed by a middle finger salute"

Another person added:

“Bet that horse hasn’t paid rego” and “Why wasn’t it painted high viz?”

Another intelligent response was:

"F off... I did nothing wrong officer, this is a war on cars, I pay your salary..."

An interesting scenario posted by an overpaid bureaucrat that has nothing better to do.

At least I now know what to do if I approach a horse and it is restless and the rider is shitting his/her pants and can't control the horse and shouldn't be riding it on the road!