168 Pa. 214 | Pa. | 1895
Opinion by
The plaintiff was injured by falling with his team and wagon down a steep declivity at the side-of a public road. At the place of the accident the road was only eleven feet wide. On one side there was an embankment, and on the other the declivity extended some seventy feet to a stream. The descent for the first ten feet was vertical, and for the rest of the way it was so steep that the plaintiff and his horses rolled down it fifty feet until their motion was arrested by a- stump. There was no guard rail or barrier of any kind at this point.
Whether a horse which is “skittish” in the sense of being easily frightened can be safely driven on an ordinary road depends mainly upon his disposition and training in other respects. It depends not so much upon his liability to become frightened, which is in a greater or less degree common to all horses, as upon what he is likely to do when frightened. A horse that bolts or turns or backs cannot be safely used on any road. If while easily frightened he is also easily controlled he may be safely driven on any ordinary country road. The question of safety relates not only to the tendency of the horse to become frightened, but also to the facility with which he can be controlled, and it is too broad a statement to say that country roads must be so kept that “skittish” horses maybe driven upon them with safety. There is no duty whatever to provide for the use of vicious, untrained or unmanageable horses, and whoever drives such horses upon the road does so at his peril. Gutters provided for drainage, banks and depressions at the sides, and any obstacles outside of the beaten path become in such cases objects of danger, and it is utterly impracticable to guard against them.
The duty is to make provision against such dangers as are probable in the use of ordinarily manageable horses, and not in the use of such as are untrained and uncontrollable. This duty is performed when the roads are maintained in a reasonably safe condition for the ordinary public travel. The instruction referred to did the defendant no harm in this case. The place where the accident happened was one of manifest danger, and there is no evidence that the horse was unsafe for use.
The judgment is affirmed.