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Do air vests really protect you during a fall?

I’ve heard they may do more harm than good. Opinions welcome!

This is hardly somewhere I’d want “opinions”.

Quoted from USEF website:

“The Transport Research Lab worked with British Eventing in 2015, evaluating the effectiveness of air vests by using lab models to simulate horses landing on riders and measuring compressive forces,” says Hart. “This study did show evidence of probable reduction of seriousness of crushing forces, but these studies had limitations.”

In a study conducted by the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, researchers reviewed cross-country falls that occurred at FEI events from 2015 through 2017 and compared the rate of injury between riders who wore an air vest and riders who did not. Statistical analysis showed that riders with air vests in fact had increased odds of sustaining a serious injury. However, this study did not show that the air vests caused the injury, and other factors may be at play.

I couldn’t find the Transport Research Lab’s published paper, but here’s a pdf from FEI that outlines the procedure, as well as points out some of the aforementioned limitations in the study. The TL;DR is that under the single loading condition (dropping a horse from roughly 4ft onto a crash dummy), the air vest reduced the likelihood of serious chest injury from 94% to 81%.

The other study can be found here. It’s worth noting, it’s a retrospective study and only looks at the number of serious/fatal accidents vs non-serious falls and compares it to the number of riders wearing air vests vs just the standard foam vets. It does not take into consideration the types/severity of falls nor the level the rider was competing at, and as such, the study does NOT claim that the air vests were the cause of additional injury. This article outlines a few potential causes for the results at the bottom, but I cannot stress how important it is to understand exactly what this study does and does NOT say. There are so many cases where studies like this come out and look bad on paper, but in reality are quite positive. For example, soldiers wearing helmets increased the rate of head injuries (because they were suffering injuries, and not dying). Similarly, the invention of seatbelts also “increased” risk of being severely injured in a car accident (again, because people were no longer being catapulted out the windshield and dying).

At the end of the day, there’s a lot more research that needs to be done. Given the evidence, I don’t think anyone can make broad-strokes statements with any kind of certainty.

At this point, I think it’s fair to assess your personal risk and decide what makes you most comfortable, then act accordingly. For example, if you’ve got a pre-existing neck condition and you’re worried about whiplash, the additional neck support from an air vest would be appealing to me, but if you’re on a steady-eddie and your biggest risk of a fall is likely to be rotational, then perhaps the added bulk/distraction of an air vest would be of very limited value.

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There was some pretty recent threads on this very subject. Search here for them.

I guess you can ask the same questions about car air bags. Do they do more harm than good? Have people gotten hurt by car air bags? Sure. But as a whole they do more good than harm.

Since 2018 MotoGP, the top motorcycle racing league, has mandatory air bags for all their riders.

I would agree that more research needs to be done, most of us do not have to worry about our horse falling on top of us. The equestrian world needs to set a standard that all air vests should meet.

For me, I always wear one and it has saved me weeks of downtime recovering from a fall, bad lower back.

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The difference (and it is a huge difference) is that automobile air bags were rigorously tested before being put in vehicles.
Air vests have not been. They are in essence being tested on the people who are buying them, though there is no scientific data being gathered.

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I have read stories of people claiming their air vest broke ribs…

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My uncle’s cousin’s neighbor’s neuropath said air vests cause malaria. /s

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I fell off in my air vest for the first time a week ago today. My horse tripped and we both went down — in trying to find his feet again, he rolled on top of me. My vest inflated before I hit the ground and I think I would have broken many ribs without it. I broke my nose and was covered in bruises, but everything under the vest was completely injury-free.

I definitely think there’s more research to be done about them (I was a bit nervous when I first started wearing one for this exact reason), but I can now at least personally say that for me, it did indeed protect me exactly as it should have during a fall.

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My horse fell this summer and I didn’t have time even to put out my hands before my head slammed into the ground. Without the air vest I would have broken my neck Buy and wear an air vest. You only have one neck. FYI very experienced horse and rider trotting on flat ground.

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Ok, that’s funny! lol

I think a regular safety vest, that has all the testing and certifications, is a better choice. But those are often not worn because people say they are uncomfortable. An air vest is probably better than no vest most of the time.

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But at least testicles remain unharmed :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Yep. Regular body protectors are (generally) less expensive and have actual safety testing and research behind them. They’re probably a little hotter than just the air vests, but having had two now that are actually well fitted, I don’t find them uncomfortable to impede my movement at all.

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I agree, does not get in the way of riding at all.
When I put my vest on I feel like I have this huge thing on me. As soon as I stop thinking about it and just tack/ride I forget I have the darn thing on.

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I love my Hit Air. I tend to roll off the shoulder and land on my back. My vest keeps the back of my head from touching the ground. Let me also say I am an eventer so wearing a vest is the norm.

Aren’t eventers required to wear a regular vest and are permitted to wear an air vest over that? I’ve read that the air vests have been tested as secondary protection, worn over a traditional safety vest, but they have not been tested alone. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s one reason I chose a traditional safety vest over an air vest. The other reason is the cost of the canisters for the air vest - while watching the Green Incentive Hunter championship livestream from Kentucky, the commentators kept laughing at all the canisters that could be heard going off in the schooling area nearby (I could hear them on the livestream too). I have to believe most were going off due to the riders forgetting to unhook prior to dismounting, rather than that there were numerous falls occurring. Those canisters are not cheap!

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In addition to not having much testing behind them, the primary reason for requiring eventers to still wear regular vests is in the instance the horse and rider suffer a rotational fall. The air vest will only inflate once the ripcord has been pulled (via being separated from the horse), but in a rotational fall, the rider doesn’t usually separate from the horse until after they’ve hit the ground, rendering the vest useless and leaving the rider utterly devoid of any kind of protection.

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Yes, a prominent hunter rider recently wrote about her experience with this very issue - she was wearing an air vest and her horse fell. She did not separate from her horse, so her air vest lanyard didn’t separate from the saddle, the vest did not inflate, and she landed on the canister, resulting in one or more broken ribs. That might not be 100% accurate but she did end up with broken bones because the vest did not inflate.

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And how can an air vest prevent a broken neck?

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You can, but the forces, the mechanisms of injury, and the possible trajectories of the person in the car are completely different than that from a rider on a horse. You can’t just say any inflation mechanism will assuredly prevent injury.

In a car, the person is strapped to the seat and it’s well understood where the human will be and how the body will move in a crash. With horses none of that is known. (In fact, it’s bad news to have an air bag inflate if the passenger is in a rear facing car seat or if the passenger is unbelted.)

I think the idea of air vests is super exciting but it’s really disappointing how little evidence there is for them. At best they appear to not make much difference, so far.

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