Motorists and horse riders were given road safety advice at an event hosted by the British Horse Society (BHS).

Advice to motorists included slowing down to a maximum of 15mph when passing a horse, not sounding the car’s horn or revving the engine, and passing wide and slow around horses and their riders.

Horse riders were told to wear high visibility clothing - even on bright days, show courtesy to drivers and tell someone where you are going and what time you’ll be back.

About 50 people attended the event at the Isle of Man Sports Institute, in Douglas, which comes ahead of a planned campaign to improve off road access for horse riders.

Helen Goldie, an organiser of the event and a former police officer, said: ’I invited a great selection of speakers to pass on valuable information, experience and advice on all aspects of road and rider awareness including ensuring that riders are educated in using the roads as and when we have to.

’None of us want to use them, we just use them to get to our local off road routes.’

Alan Hiscox, BHS director of safety, PC Richard Goldie from the roads policing unit, Samantha Heard who is the government’s road safety manager and Elizabeth Simpson, an advocate with expertise in equine law who is a consultant with Simcocks dispute resolution department, made up the panel.

A presentation by Mr Hiscox showed that tensions between horse riders and other road users trace back to when ’horsepower’ moved its meaning away from the animals to the motorcar.

The organisation’s research showed a rise in reported road incidents involving horse riders and cars, with there being 2,902 incidents reported to the BHS within the past seven years in the UK.

There were also 39 rider deaths, 230 horse deaths and 840 horses injured.

Some 85% of these incidents were due to vehicles passing too fast or too closely to the horse.

The number of incidents in the island reported to the BHS within the same time frame was two.

However, research the BHS has done shows this could be significantly more.

PC Goldie said he was aware of about five complaints received and dealt with by the island’s police regarding horse riding incidents on the road in the last year.

Mrs Goldie explained that a campaign is being planned next spring to warn road users against passing too closely.

’We would like to work with the Department of Infrastructure and the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture to improve off road access and access to the green lanes in the island.

’Improvements in gates, routes, mounting blocks, parking etcetera will go a long way to give greater options to the horse riding community with more areas to ride in reducing the amount of time on the roads.’