Yeah, the fact that you cant attack from horse back and their lack of speed bothered me too. On top of that when the horse decides to attack enemies it frequently gets in my line of fire so it has me fretting and being extra cautious when attacking enemies in those cases. I'm not sure; can you buy another horse from the same stable if your horse dies or does the game only have one per stable available? I mean if so you've got to really be careful not hit your horse when attacking enemies otherwise if you accidentally get too many killed soon you won't even be able to have the option of riding a horse. Sure the horse can be good at drawing attention away from you at times, but their attacks don't seem to do much harm to the enemy. I dare anyone to try to keep standing or conscious for that after a horse that size rears up and kicks you in real life.
Yes the horse dose do that attacking thing since its a war horse and yeah its attacks do kinda suck. Also yeah I do kinda worry about hitting it to. But if if dies you can buy another from the same place. Only thing is it costs you another 1000 gold.
Oh and a side note I had a glitch with them horse vanished while I was on it and also when I stood in front of it. It turned its head to look at me and I was inside its head. (No brains completely empty).