Manhattan: Last month, a carriage horse collapsed and died on the streets of New York City. Last week, a spooked horse crashed outside Central Park. Last Friday, another horse went down at 60th St. and Broadway.

Carriage horses hark back to a time when streets were not congested with cars, trucks and buses. Under the conditions of modern city life, their daily routine consists of trudging on asphalt, inhaling exhaust and navigating a maze of stalled or speeding traffic.

Legal protections are not adequately enforced, and accidents involving carriage horses occur too often.

Carriage rides are not the primary reason people come to New York. Paris, London, Toronto and Las Vegas are no less glamorous and thriving cities for having banned them.

Look into the horses’ eyes. They don’t look happy or healthy. They don’t belong in our congested cities. It’s perverse and inhumane to suggest that we need to subject them to such misery. 

New York Daily News - Letters to the Editor