ATLANTA, April 21 (UPI) -- Atlanta should join Paris and London in banning horse-drawn carriages from city streets, an animal-rights group said.
Forcing horses to pull heavy loads through busy streets is cruel and endangers horses and people, Debbie Leahy, director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said Tuesday in a letter to Mayor Kasim Reed and the Atlanta City Council.
Leahy cited an accident Friday night in which a speeding car on Peachtree Street destroyed a carriage, sending four people to a hospital and traumatizing a horse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday.
"This incident should be a wake-up call to the people of Atlanta," Leahy's letter said, also citing carriage wrecks this month in Philadelphia and New Bern, N.C.
Internationally, London, Paris, Bejing and Toronto have banned carriages and in the United States carriages have been banned in Biloxi, Miss.; Reno, Nev.; Santa Fe, N.M., and several towns in Florida, PETA said.
Reed was not available for comment, Journal-Constitution said.
