It happened in an instant. On June 17, 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan was thrown from a runaway carriage near Tavern on the Green in New York City.
The horse had reportedly become spooked, possibly by a freak electrical current that the city has failed to address. The horse bolted, broke loose from the driver and then slammed into another carriage. Mahajan was critically injured and rushed to a hospital, where he died. The family is suing the city for $105 million.
About a week prior, a horse named Deniz had collapsed suddenly in Central Park while pulling a carriage with passengers. He never stood back up. According to the necropsy, the cause of death was ingestion of toxic yew plants – a tragedy that proper care and caution might have easily prevented.
These recent events force the question many have been asking for years: Why does the dangerous, cruel and outdated carriage horse industry still exist in cities across the United States?
Romanch's Law would phase out carriage horses in NYC
The New York City Council is considering a ban on the historic carriage rides. The human and equine deaths in Manhattan sparked a fresh wave of rallying for the passage of what was once called Ryder’s Law, a bill named after a carriage horse who died in Hell’s Kitchen in 2022.
If approved, the bill would phase out carriage horses in the city, bringing an end to a cruel and archaic industry that has no place in the concrete chaos of contemporary metropolises. Following the recent death, the bill is now called Romanch’s Law.
Horse-drawn carriages are often defended as tradition, but cities have changed dramatically since carriages were ordinary transportation. Today’s carriage horses may face heavy traffic, noise, pollution, hard surfaces, heavy loads, long workdays, extreme weather and lack of pasture access.
This form of transportation isn’t old-world charm; it’s animal cruelty. As we know all too well, a spooked horse can be lethal to humans.
Regulation is often presented as a compromise: give horses breaks, watch the temperatures, require inspections, limit hours. In New York, horses were moved from the city streets and relegated to only work in Central Park, but that didn’t save Deniz or Ryder.
Even well-intended rules cannot turn a cityscape into a pasture, where the yew plants that killed Deniz would not have existed. Rules also cannot change the fact that horses are living beings with fear, fatigue, instincts and limits.
Horses can be startled. They can overheat. They can slip. A city that values compassion should not need another public tragedy before choosing a better path.
Chicago, Philadelphia have already banned horse-drawn carriages
There is hope. The Philadelphia City Council has banned carriage horse businesses, with the ordinance taking effect June 26 and violations carrying fines of $1,000 per day. The city’s last carriage company closed in 2023, but a local startup has been testing battery-powered horseless carriages
Other cities know how to move beyond this, as well. Chicago banned horse-drawn carriages in 2021. In 2024, San Antonio approved a plan to phase out horse-drawn carriages by 2030, with a gradual transition that includes electric carriages and pedicabs.
The choice is not between carriage rides and vibrant city tourism. Cities can preserve beauty and storytelling without relying on animal suffering.
Workers should not be abandoned in the process. They are not mere footnotes in the debate, but have families to support and often play a part of their cities' tourism economies.
Humane policy should protect animals while helping people move out of outdated systems through job training, transition support and clear paths into work that still serves the city’s visitors – from electric carriage and pedicab tours to hospitality, parks-related roles, vending and other small-business opportunities.
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who says he supports banning horse-drawn carriages, has an opportunity to make worker transition part of the policy, not an afterthought.
Mamdani's administration also has a worker-support model in the Office of Street Vendor Services. That same worker-conscious approach belongs here: A carriage ban should help workers move into safer, more humane, modern tourism work while finally removing horses from the streets.
We can honor history without putting horses in harm's way
Cities can honor history without trapping animals inside it. They can keep the romance of an evening tour, the storytelling woven through a historic district and the magic of a slow ride without placing horses in harm’s way. They can choose modern, humane tourism before another collapse, another runaway, another terrified witness or another animal whose final moments become part of an argument everyone claims to have seen coming.
Deniz deserved better than a city street as his last stop. So do the horses still working in New York; Nashville; Savannah, Georgia; Cape May, New Jersey; and every city where nostalgia still outruns compassion.
It is time for cities across the United States to retire horse-drawn carriages and build traditions worthy of the animals we claim to love and protect.
Nina Jackel is the founder of Lady Freethinker, a nonprofit organization aimed at exposing and stopping animal cruelty through investigative reporting, petitions and grants.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Horse-drawn carriages in cities aren't charming. They're cruel. | Opinion
