An Old Coachman's Chatter, with Some Practical Remarks on DrivingCorbett, Edward
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An Old Coachman's Chatter, with Some Practical Remarks on Driving
Corbett, Edward
Coaching (Transportation); Driving of horse-drawn vehicles
Of late years there has sprung up a fancy that blinkers are not only
unnecessary, but absolutely an evil, and a good deal of newspaper
correspondence has been the result, without going very far towards
elucidating the subject. So far as I am able to understand the
controversy, the opponents of blinkers consider they have proved their
case when they tell us that horses, when accustomed to it, are not
frightened by seeing the carriage behind them, and that therefore
there can be no danger in going without them. That horses can be used
to seeing the carriage behind them without taking fright, there can be
no doubt, but that by no means ends the question. Those on the other
side say, and with truth, that in double harness, when the bridles are
without blinkers, one horse does occasionally, either from tossing his
head or some other cause, injure the eye of the other one by striking
it with the cheek of the bit. A well-fitting blinker is no discomfort
to a horse, and I think I can bring forward a case which will go very
far to prove that they may be of great use.
One evening when I was driving the "Harkaway" coach on the down
journey, when within about a mile from Dolgelly, as we rounded a
sharpish corner of the road, the leaders caught sight of some boards
which had been left, very improperly, on the near side of the road,
and were so much frightened at the sight that they bolted right across
to the other side of the road, and, that being rather narrow, it was
as much as I could do to prevent the coach running into the off-side
hedge, which would most certainly have ended in a spill, and probably
have been attended with very disastrous consequences, for, as was
usual in summer, there was a good load of passengers and luggage.
We must recollect that a horse, from the position of his eye, has the
power of seeing a long way behind him, which is necessary to his
safety in a wild state, as he depends very largely for defence upon
his heels; consequently, any object which alarms him continues in
sight for a long time, and in the case I have just mentioned, I am
certain that if they could have seen the object of their terror
another moment, nothing I could have done would have saved an
accident.
Perhaps I shall be told that if these horses had never been driven in
blinkers they would not have shied at the boards; to which I can only
answer that saddle horses which have never had their sight restricted
in their lives are by no means free from the fault of shying. As I
have already remarked, a well-fitting blinker can cause no discomfort
to a horse, as it presses upon and rubs no part of the head, and, to
say the least of it, they may be a great safeguard against accidents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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