Google Street View Car Spooks Horse; Moment Preserved Forever

Google Street View is my favorite time-waster. You can take a virtual walk in the center of Paris, a village in Romania, Oprah’s neighborhood or myriad other locations where you’re not likely to take an actual walk any time soon.

Originally the service only captured major cities, but it rapidly expanded to smaller towns and even quite remote areas. Now you can view rural scenes from around the globe. Unfortunately for one rider in Finland, one of those scenes was of her horse spooking, running off the road, dumping her in a field and bolting away.

This series of images was captured back in 2009 but recently discovered and posted to imgur by user ttra. Most of the media outlets that have shared the images have reported that the rider is fine, as evidenced by the far-off shot of the horse and rider walking together in the field, but I’m not so sure. The rider is in a pink coat, and the two people with the horse as the Google car drives away are in black and red. So, what happened to the rider?

In any case, credit to the driver of the street view car who did apparently stop after the rider fell, as evidenced by the change in scene and characters from one frame along Sievinmäentie to the next. I’m even willing to give the driver the benefit of the doubt as far as courtesy to the rider goes. Even a slow-moving Google car could seem pretty scary to a horse.

On the other hand, it kind of stinks to live in the world where you can’t just go for a quiet ride on a remote, dirt road in a rural part of Finland and have full expectation that any less-than-flattering moments won’t be caught on camera and posted to the Internet forever.

Leslie Potter is Managing Editor of horseillustrated.com. Follow her on Twitter: @LeslieInLex.