More talk about air- vests

[Snugglerug]

[QUOTE=Aaspen;7073230]
I can tell you a quick bad case scenario. It happened to me, and while this was before airvests were invented, nothing would have helped (except a more average fall from a horse). Riding horse at walk, horse rears, horse flips over with rider still attached to horse, horse lands on rider resulting in open book pelvic fracture. Horse gets up, rider then becomes detached from horse. Airvest would then inflate possibly making fracture worse. (Not that it could have gotten much worse than that). Anyway, this happened to me (like I said, it was before airvests, so I added that possibly scenario to illustrate the potential). I do wear an airvest everytime I ride because I feel as though statistically speaking, the chance of that occurring again is slim. I equate it to the person who brought up seatbelts. Yes, there are a few scenarios where not having a seatbelt on could save your life, but on average, wearing a seatbelt will be a good thing. ( let me add I also had L1, L5, S 1-3, and and an acetabular fracture. )[/QUOTE]

Ouch! So sorry to hear you had such a bad fall! Yes, I think that’s one of those worse-case scenarios where nothing would have helped.

[Snugglerug]

[QUOTE=RAyers;7073256]
Yes, and also when they don’t deploy at all (e.g. the rider forgets to replace the cartridge, the bayonet does not puncture the cartridge, the cartridge is installed incorrectly, the lanyard breaks, the lanyard fails to activate the bayonet…). All are examples of cases where the vest failed to deploy.

And here is another piece of wisdom I hear in the spine group: “The spine is the brain. You don’t mess with the brain, you don’t mess with the spine.”[/QUOTE]

Well, if the vest fails to deploy because the rider forgot to replace the cartridge . . . .you can’t fix stupid. That would be like blaming the car manufacturer because I forgot to put on my seatbelt. That’s human error, not a problem with the technology. Kind of like falling off because you forgot to tighten your girth. Not the girth’s fault.

[RAyers]

True, however, it does not necessarily remove liability from the manufacturer. This is why testing is very risky in the US, given the litigious nature of our society. The purpose of the post, though is to show that there are cases of vests failing to deploy, regardless of cause. These are examples of the “fail-dangerous” aspects of the technology.

There is a case where the cartridge did not have sufficient pressure so the vest was slow to deploy (presented at the USEA convention). Thus, the cartridge maker was at fault (except they were not a US company).

[wildlifer]

[QUOTE=Snugglerug;7073180]
Deltawave, I don’t know anything more than the average lay person about anatomy, and since I started this thread to learn, maybe you can help make this more clear for me. Here’s my question: in the average fall, the order of “go” should be 1. Separate from horse. 2. Airvest Deploys. 3. Rider hits ground/jump/whatever. [/QUOTE]

Except you forgot a step. 4. Airvest deflates. So now, any unstable fractures, be they through the cross section of the bone or a burst fracture or shatter, will now shift. That little fragment in delta’s neck just poked her spinal cord.

And Reed, excellent advice on checking to see if the head is attached. I really should do this before I leave the house each morning!

[Winding_Down]

Not only does testing seem risky, it seems like it would be extraordinarily complex and expensive, related to other safety tests. I cannot begin the fathom the nature of the research and how extensive it would need to be, especially since only a fraction of the riders wear the vests.

In comparison, helmet research has been simpler. Everyone has to wear a helmet so you don’t have to control for the multitude of extraneous factors that would influence the results of an air vest study. I assume the simulation studies are much easier with helmets than with air vests (and you have to simulate what is a likely accident etc) Gives me a headache simply thinking of all those factors one would have to control for.

I so want this research to be done and I abhor sleazy marketing. (I haven’t even read the ads for air vests though.) But I also can see reasons why good research has not been done.

[vineyridge]

Laura Collett has broken ribs and a punctured lung. Sinead has broken ribs and a broken Shoulder blade. Both are in ICU. Unless I’m remembering wrong, both are air vest people. If the things can’t protect against broken ribs in a bad fall, they really aren’t much use to my way of thinking.

[Kementari]

While the risk of a rotational fall may be negligible at the lower levels, I’d point out rotational falls are not the only way a horse and rider fall together. Over the years, I’ve had four horse falls where I did not fall away from the horse enough for a (hypothetical) air vest to deploy until after the impact - one where a horse reared and went over sideways on me, two due to footing issues in indoor arenas (neither jump related; one was just schooling dressage), and one in gymkhana. I separated a rib in the most recent one, which was also the only time I was wearing a vest (but the MOI was probably the way I twisted as I hit the ground not the actual impact, so not something any vest is going to help with). If that had been an air vest, I’d certainly have been in more pain when the thing inflated several seconds after the fact (took the horse a few seconds to start to get up), and it is not hard to imagine that in a similar situation where a rib was actually broken, more dramatic damage could be caused by suddenly and forcefully displacing it. Whether the vest inflated in or out would be immaterial - an inflating (and then deflating) vest would have moved my torso as it pushed it away from the ground that it was resting on immediately post-fall.

In other words, you don’t have to be a 4* rider to have to worry about, um, creative falls. And I’d posit (though admittedly based on purely anecdotal evidence) that such falls are far, FAR more common than seatbelt entrapments and thus deserving of serious consideration.

[Winding_Down]

[QUOTE=vineyridge;7074154]
Laura Collett has broken ribs and a punctured lung. Sinead has broken ribs and a broken Shoulder blade. Both are in ICU. Unless I’m remembering wrong, both are air vest people. If the things can’t protect against broken ribs in a bad fall, they really aren’t much use to my way of thinking.[/QUOTE]

Whoa Nelly. There is NO WAY you can tell what the accidents may have been like without the vests. They may have been crushed and killed instantly without vests, for all we know. We don’t know.

[3dazey]

Sinead’s fall happened in show jumping and I’d be pretty confident that she was not wearing an air vest at that time.

[RacetrackReject]

[QUOTE=Winding Down;7074213]
Whoa Nelly. There is NO WAY you can tell what the accidents may have been like without the vests. They may have been crushed and killed instantly without vests, for all we know. We don’t know.[/QUOTE]

Which is why accidents like these need to examined. Through videos/photos/reconstruction/first hand accounts, there are people (like Reed) that can use the data to give a better picture of what did/could/would have happened and answered many of these questions, but the vest companies aren’t interested in that. I’m sure that very shortly there will be an ad about how Lauren’s vest ‘SAVED HER LIFE’, but no one really knows one way or the other without research. The air vest manufacturers have even come on here and promised to post data----never happened, because there is none.

[Jealoushe]

[QUOTE=vineyridge;7074154]
Laura Collett has broken ribs and a punctured lung. Sinead has broken ribs and a broken Shoulder blade. Both are in ICU. Unless I’m remembering wrong, both are air vest people. If the things can’t protect against broken ribs in a bad fall, they really aren’t much use to my way of thinking.[/QUOTE]

Not saying they are related - but it is a good question. There do seem to be more severe injuries WITH them, punctured lungs seem to be a theme. KOC was hurt in hers too was she not?

[Janet]

[QUOTE=Winding Down;7074213]
Whoa Nelly. There is NO WAY you can tell what the accidents may have been like without the vests. They may have been crushed and killed instantly without vests, for all we know. We don’t know.[/QUOTE]

In spite of all the videos they show, the vest manufacturers say (I asked directly at the USEA meeting) that air vests will not protect you from being CRUSHED.

[Janet]

[QUOTE=Jealoushe;7074359]
…KOC was hurt in hers too was she not?[/QUOTE] Yes, and if you go back to then, there was a thread in which RAyers described, in great detail, the ways in which the air vest may very well have made the injury worse
Primarily, IIRC, by forcing the spine into a rigid position, so that the forces could not be absorbed by the spine bending or twisting, but things “broke” instead.

[Winding_Down]

I would guess there are more severe injuries with the vests for many possible reasons. First and foremost, the people most likely to wear them are the ones who are jumping at the most risk. Just look at the percentage of air vests worn at the 4* level as compared to the BN level.

We really have to have data, real data, and not just conjecture, guesses, etc. On both sides. Bad advertising and bad bashing… don’t get us anywhere, at all.

[vineyridge]

Are air vests commonly used in any other competitive sport, horse or otherwise. They developed for motorcycle riders, but do motorcycle racers use them?

[eqsiu]

[QUOTE=Winding Down;7074471]

We really have to have data, real data, and not just conjecture, guesses, etc. On both sides. Bad advertising and bad bashing… don’t get us anywhere, at all.[/QUOTE]

That’s just it! My biggest issue with the testing data available is that it all compares the vest to nothing rather than the air vest/regular vest combo to just a regular vest. That would be the most applicable comparison for eventing given those are the two situations encountered in competition. Without that I just can’t justify even wanting to spend the money on one (especially since I can’t afford to event at the moment anyway).

[NCRider]

[QUOTE=3dazey;7074218]
Sinead’s fall happened in show jumping and I’d be pretty confident that she was not wearing an air vest at that time.[/QUOTE]

Just as an FYI, some eventers do wear their air vests in stadium at one day events where they’re going directly to XC after stadium.

I’m too lazy to look up whether this would have been the case at Chatt Hills or not.

[2horseowner]

She was not wearing a vest. I saw the show photos and they show the mare crashing through the poles. The frames stop just before she comes off.

[Snugglerug]

Thanks everyone for your input, positive and negative. You’ve given me a lot to think about. For now, I’m bowing out of this thread, as I’m attempting my first BN HT in 2 weeks and I don’t need visions of falls dancing in my head. :eek:

Carry on without me if you’d like!

[Aaspen]

The only vest that will help from being crushed is the EXO cage. There was alot of R &D that went into them. They were NOT popular. I don’t believe they are being made anymore. I am really surprised with everyone being so concerned about rotational falls and crushing injuries, that they were not better received. Yes, they are very ugly, but not much heavier than your average crash vest, and I am a small woman (5’7 125lbs)