If you can’t get behind the H&H pay wall, here is the news release from British Eventing.
http://www.britisheventing.com/asp-net/news/item.aspx?id=5965
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That BE test though doesn’t seem to take into account WHEN the vest inflates (sounds as though theirs were inflated pre-drop of cadaver).
A disastrous rotational fall problem is when the rider is still within the lanyards reach of the horse/tack and thus doesn’t trigger the airvest prior to the crushing event (hence the requirement for a full-time solid vest).
Next problem then comes up with a delayed activation as the fallen horse (hopefully) gets up but may then jolt a dented rider even further and could cause more damage than was already done.
Are they helpful when someone gets simply flung from the tack and an airvest activates before human hits the fence/tree/ground/whatever–probably —and for that type of situation the motocross testing data shouldn’t be disregarded as it may have numbers to support timing of activation/failure rate (or reason to have a solid vest backup)/positioning of neck support etc.
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Well, I’m glad there was SOMETIHNG done. Better than nothing. I want to know if the dummy had a regular vest on underneath the air vest too, and if they tested without also. It’s not super clear.
The exemplar horse cadaver was also relatively light in comparison with a typical Eventing horse; a heavier horse or greater fall height would be expected to increase the risk of severe chest injury.
So they must have used a pony?
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The BE test was definitely not ideal under any circumstances. Dropping a fairly light-weight (less than 1100lbs) horse cadaver (ie something that is not still moving in any given direction but DOWN) from a set height (which was LESS THAN FOUR FEET and had no momentum behind it) onto an already inflated vest (oh boy where to even start with that)… that only tells us what MIGHT happen under the absolute best case scenario. Is it really applicable to how a fall would happen in an actual event, from an actual live horse? Probably not. Does it address any of the potential issues that could occur? Definitely not. BE even points that out in their conclusions. The study is a bit useless, because depending on how you want to interpret the results, air vests might help a lot more than we think, or they might be actually be less safe under different circumstances.
But next time you pre-inflate your vest and then drop a dead horse on yourself, rest assured in the fact that you’ll be getting 13% more protection than you otherwise might.
FWIW I asked both major companies three years ago if there would be research done pertaining air vest safety in equestrian sports and they both said it was already in progress. I have never seen any results other than the BE “test”.
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Is 13% less dead still dead?
I’ve asked this question here before but can anyone point me to a video in which the rider falls and the vest clearly works as advertised - as in, starts to inflate before the rider hits the ground?
I’ve seen a lot of videos where the vest inflates after the rider hits the ground or is getting up, and I’m not sure how helpful that is unless you’re also about to be hit by a car or something.
There was a fall involving Clayton Fredericks a few years back (and discussed on here) that I thought would be ideal, but CF ‘forgot’ to hook up his lanyard so there was no deployment. I say ‘forgot’ because he might have been wearing the vest for sponsorship reasons rather than safety reasons.
Earlier this year, I was coaching at a modern pentathlon World Cup in Poland. The leader going in to the riding was a British girl who wears an air vest. She is the only pentathlete who does this, although there are a number of athletes who wear conventional vests. (This GB athlete is not a very skilled rider at all, which is unusual for the British team. I assume she doesn’t come from Pony Club like the rest of them.)
The girl had a stop at fence 5 or so, an in-and-out and she tumbled over the fence while her horse stayed on the other side. She hit the ground with the vest still uninflated, although it inflated as she stood up. She got back on and completed (you can do this in pent) but with a score that put her way down the results table. IIRC, she was okay enough to do the final phase – running and shooting – but was on the slow end, so maybe she was a little sore. But the vest did not deploy in time to help her at all.
(Incidentally, another top-placed athlete had a fall in the riding, where she let the horse get so strung out it jumped through a fence. She was tossed into base of the next jump, hitting her lower back against the standard. She needed to be stretched out and did not complete the competition. I do think a conventional body protector would have mitigated the impact and bruising in her case.)
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Pretty sure yes. :lol:
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You should have warned us that was coming up. I just had soda come out my nose! :lol:
I’ll just add that I agree with the comments here regarding the relative uselessness of that study to determine how effective air vests are unless you’re doing the above.
ETA: I find it very troubling to hear of such a delay between coming off the horses and vest inflation. Some people here have commented on the vest being inflated when they land, so I’m having trouble understanding why there are discrepancies in the timing of inflation.
Again, this is something research would address…especially comparing vests and comparing different falls and differences in inflation times.
Thats my biggest fear with these vets. Paralysis, from a broken neck or spine, then the horse gets up, vest deploys and - too late.
Do they still manufacture that?
They do in ski helmets!
Is anyone else irked by the comparison of air vests to air bags? Per the BE article, “Similar to the airbag in a car, air jackets are designed to inflate and offer protection when the rider falls from a horse”.
Vehicles’ airbags are designed to slow your momentum, not to give you a softer surface to slam into. They work by rapidly deflating as you contact them, whereas airvests are designed to be at full inflation on impact. They’re more bouncy castle than airbag. Early airbags were rigid, like airvests, and sometimes caused injury, hence their current venting for rapid deflation.
I don’t understand why this fundamental design component from airbags hasn’t been incorporated into airvests, if that’s what they’re trying to model their safety design after. It seems like the one place where having sustained inflation would help would be in the event of the horse falling on top of the rider, except it’s also the most likely scenario to not have the airvest inflated before impact.
I’m neither an engineer nor an expert in biomechanics, so the answer to that question may be quite simple, but it seems like a design flaw from my know-nothing perspective.
I have seen several people fall and their air vest have inflated before they hit the ground. I’ve also watched several inflate when the rider dismounted before remembering to disconnect the lanyard - usually right as their feet hit the ground and scaring their horse and everyone/everything around them! That said, I don’t think any of the falls I have seen have really been “bad” enough that I felt the air vest provided any more protection than the standard vest (which all people were wearing under the air vest). The air vest seems very “hard” once it has inflated, so it may provide some bounce when you hit the ground, but I think you could still be bruised when you body hits the inflated air vest. Because I ride a very sensitive-to-flapping-things horse, I try to minimize the number of things I wear that could flap and I know I would be routinely forgetting to disconnect and inflating when I dismounted, which would absolutely terrify my horse. Therefore, I do not wear an air vest. If legitimate testing proved they were significantly more effective than just wearing my regular vest, then I would reconsider my position.
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