A coachman was injured when a spooked carriage horse charged into another horse-drawn carriage and caused it to overturn in Central Park on Monday, according to authorities.
The animal became startled after an abrupt movement and collided with another horse-drawn carriage near West 59th Street and West Drive just before 4:00 p.m., according to the NYPD.
The spooked equine caused the other carriage to overturn, briefly trapping a 44-year-old coachman and causing him to fall to the ground, cops and witnesses said.
The man was taken to a local hospital in stable condition. The horse did not sustain any injuries in the crash, police added.
Photos from the scene captured stunned parkgoers on the unseasonably warm afternoon surrounding the overturned carriage as the hurt coachman lay on the roadway.
Edita Birnkrant, the Executive Director of the nonprofit New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets, told The Post the accident was a “preventable tragedy.”
“This has happened so many times, carriage drivers have been injured and nearly killed, passengers have been injured and nearly killed,” Birnkrant said.
“It’s just insane, it’s madness, and our heart goes out to the driver who was injured, to the horse,” she said. “New Yorkers have had enough of this.”
Birnkrant urged Big Apple lawmakers to consider passing Ryder’s Law to phase out horse carriages — a nod to a carriage horse named Ryder who tragically collapsed while working on a hot August day in 2022.
“There is a better way than pretending it’s 1826 and that we can continue to put people’s lives at risk by forcing these horses, many of whom are elderly and in bad shape,” Birnkrant said.
“There was an air quality alert in effect [today], and these horses are forced into these stressful, unhealthy, unsafe conditions day after day,” she added. “We want Midtown to be safer, we want the horses to be running free on grass as nature intended.”
The City Council’s health panel refused to advance Ryders Law out of committee in November, despite support from equine activists and former Mayor Eric Adams.
“It’s past time for the New York City Council to pass Ryder’s Law and end this dangerous, archaic industry before the next carriage overturns, the next horse collapses, or the next person gets seriously hurt or killed,” PETA Director Ashley Byrne said in a statement.
The crash remains under investigation, police said.
Additional reporting by Nicole Rosenthal
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