October 31, 2014
By Neal Tepel
New York, NY – Foiled documents from the NYPD on carriage horses for 5 years from 6/1/2014 through 5/31/2014 indicate the horse carriage industry is among the safest forms of transit in New York City.
NYCLASS supporters have made many complaints to the NYPD alleging horse abuse and accidents on the street. The NYPD records indicate few collisions resulting in little or no property damage. The carriages made approximately 250,000 trips to and from the park and an estimated 1.5 million carriage rides during the time period covered by the FOIL. According to the data provided in the FOIL request, there were 22 collisions. This includes 10 "hit and run" allegations where there was not corroborating evidence other than the complainant.
Horse-drawn carriages are more than 13 times safer than taxi cabs. Only 1 in 90,000 carriage "trips" resulted in an accident. That's the equivalent to an average driver making 4 trips per day in a car having a collision once every 61.6 years. When the records are compared with traffic accident data available from the NYPD for all vehicles from 10/1/2011 to 5/31/2014, carriage accidents account for less than 0.003% of all traffic collisions. This finding corroborates the recently completed Hell's Kitchen Traffic Study which did not mention carriages or horses at all as a traffic concern.
