with horses on board its go slow and easy with no hard stops, starts or turns, if you can help it.
As for road awareness. Always keep checking your mirrors and windows. You have to know what and where the other vehicles around you are and be thinking if something happens where do I go? Knowing the other vehicles positions and having thought about escape routes gives you those crucial microseconds of reaction time to just go instead of thinking where do I go. Planning and expecting stupidity, that's how you miss getting in a crash.
