NO such thing as "freak" or "fluke" accidents

[RAyers]

I am presenting this as a separate thread simply because I feel that this should be separated from the threads commenting to the direct tragedies.

Some context as to my position. In my professional work, I develop and use explosive reactions to synthesize materials (and in some cases try to remove materials). I’ve conducted failure investigations of explosives. I’ve been involved with, well enough, failed reactions that EH&S and I spoke almost weekly.

What is the important thing? In all my work, I’ve had to “sit down” and REALLY think about risks and ways to reduce the threats to my and my colleague’s lives so that if something went wrong, we all walked away. And trust me, some of what I do and what has happened has/had the potential to be insanely lethal. There is nothing that wakes your ass up to what you are really doing and what the risks are when you need to send everyone out of the BUILDING so you can prepare a “simple” sample for processing.

I don’t say this to be cavalier but to point out that eventing is on a serious CRASH (pun intended) course to oblivion by “ignoring” the tragedies both with horses and riders by hiding behind the concept that “riding horses is risky.” So is playing with unstable fireworks and trying an explosive chemistry nobody ever has tried, ever.

To whit: I tried a highly unstable reaction that is fairly common and well defined. I knew that risk so I built into the protocol several checks. However, one instance (we figured it was about a 1 in 10,000,000,000 shot) I literally blew up a preparation chamber. IT was NOT a freak accident! It was two grinding balls crushing the unstable oxidizer in the presence of fuel at 40gs. Something that appeared totally random but because I considered the POSSIBILITY, I was in another room when it went.

WE KNOW THE RISKS in XC. WE KNOW THE RISKS AT MANY TYPES OF FENCES. Where the hell is a HACCP plan? Where is the real, transparent investigation? Why aren’t these data incorporated into a full on analysis of mitigation?

Why do we accept the idea “ah, that’s horses?” Or, how about looking at this, what if we said, no riders would ever die again, but YOUR HORSE will die. Would we get a bit more proactive? We protect the horse, we will protect the rider and vice versa.

I’m not saying I’m the only person with the answers, but I know eventing could greatly benefit from applying the experiences and knowledge form other sports and industries where participant death was/is a regular thing.

Reed

[fordtraktor]

Yes.

Riding horses is risky.

But why not 1. figure out the risks with real, funded scientific studies, and

2. take reasonable steps to reduce it when possible.

Our horses and riders deserve it.

I think people feel that if we understand the risk better, then we’ll be forced to stop riding horses or something. That’s not how this works.

We don’t stop driving cars because engineers test them and make them safer. The world didn’t suddenly realize “oh, cars are unsafe, this driving thing has to stop!”

[HLMom]

Can someone explain the mechanics of, or contributing factors, to a rotational fall?

It would seem a horse has to have a certain level of momentum for this to happen, and the fence would have to be a certain height. Yes?

The reason I ask is that we do see horses knock a front leg on a solid obstacle in h/j (like a brush box or flower box), but the usual result seems to be a bad stumble… so what enables a rotational to occur?

[RAyers]

The most overly simplified explanation is that the fence is solid, unlike stadium fences (even with flower boxes or coops etc.). And you don’t need speed for this to happen. Another over simplification is that it is about the trajectory of the momentum and not just the momentum.

[IFG]

Completely agree. Hearing that something is s “freak” accident is like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.

[Paks]

Rotational falls occur when the front end is stopped by the fence and the horse had enough momentum that it still continues. This usually happens when the one or both of the front legs hit the fence above the knee. If the hit occurs below the knees the lower legs usually just gets a good rap and folds clearing the obstacle. However with a table the folding of the leg may not be enough as the surface of the table provides friction slowing the front end down as the backend airborne continues faster than the front end and the flip occurs.

[Janet]

The H/J equivalent of a rotational fall is coming down hard on the back rail of an oxer.

That is why all three disciplines us break-away cups on the back sides of oxers.

[CiegoStar]

When you are dealing with another living, breathing being, yes there ARE “freak” accidents, if by “freak” you mean unpredictable. The best riders and trainers can predict what their horse will do 99% of the time. But it does leave that 1%. Also there is such a thing as human error. Even the best can make a mistake.

However, I completely agree with the bigger picture about the safety of the sport and how the USEA has utterly failed to take safety seriously in the past decade. We need more real science on this issue, and saying every accident was a freak event is not good enough. I certainly hope this is the one, but I feel old, and that we’ve seen “the one” accident many times by now.

Just as an aside, I watched this year’s Maryland Hunt Cup on youtube. As is tradition, horses were crashing left and right. And yet (as far as I know, not an expert) horses are rarely killed there. Why is that? They are jumping vertical fences at high speed. The fences have a little give, but not much.

[frugalannie]

Thank you, Reed. Your examples make all too clear what is not happening but should.

[fordtraktor]

With horses, too, I think it is absurd to use the “freak accident” language because really, they are horses and we are people. Both make mistakes especially when that mistake is missing a distance to a fence and having a canter that’s a tiny bit too flat/strung out/otherwise makes the horse unable to compensate for the poor distance. In fact, it is a completely expected outcome when jumping solid fences. This kind of horse and rider error is going to happen.

“Ride better” is not a plan to deal with it. Of course we should all ride keep trying to ride better but everyone makes mistakes. Trainers MUST keep emphasizing “ride better.” that is their part. Send out riders prepared for the level. But that doesn’t always work; see this weekend. PH was prepared. By all accounts a beautiful rider, well prepared, well coached, having a great ride that day.

So that is not enough. The sport also has to implement strategies to reduce catastrophic incidents when (inevitable) accidents happen. Not freak accidents; inevitable ones. They are going to happen. Fix the jumps. Fix in between the jumps (the MPM?). Fix the equipment. Whatever needs to be done.

And we need to support that as a sport and not complain that “they are gutting it” and “when I was a kid we swam rivers and jumped cliffs and nobody complained…” yeah, well, when my kids grow up I want to be able to let them event if they want and not worry about the risks, more than I would any horse sport. I highly doubt having safer jumps will ruin everything.

Of course, change will have to be approached reasonably. There are a lot of things to take into account. Costs for small, local, schooling venues; making sure volunteers know how to use collapsible fences; etc. Give the engineers a chance to figure it out.

[RAyers]

[QUOTE=CiegoStar;8665272]
When you are dealing with another living, breathing being, yes there ARE “freak” accidents, if by “freak” you mean unpredictable. The best riders and trainers can predict what their horse will do 99% of the time. But it does leave that 1%. Also there is such a thing as human error. Even the best can make a mistake.

…[/QUOTE]

Of course we can’t predict what a horse will do! But we CAN predict how a fence will react to multiple types of hits from horses.

[IFG]

[QUOTE=RAyers;8665299]
Of course we can’t predict what a horse will do! But we CAN predict how a fence will react to multiple hits.[/QUOTE]

It is similar to dealing with bird strikes in aviation. We cannot anticipate where the birds will fly, but we can design planes and flying rules in a such a way as to avoid bird strikes.

[Groom_amp_Taxi]

[QUOTE=RAyers;8665194]

WE KNOW THE RISKS in XC. WE KNOW THE RISKS AT MANY TYPES OF FENCES. Where the hell is a HACCP plan? Where is the real, transparent investigation? Why aren’t these data incorporated into a full on analysis of mitigation?
Reed[/QUOTE]

These are the thoughts I keep coming back to - seems like whenever there is an incident at a rated event that leads to an incident of a certain severity, there ought to be some protocol for investigation by a standing committee with findings published and recommendations for mitigation - that would then need to be applied to rules/standards as needed.

While it didn’t result in any catastrophic falls, it sounds like the corner in the arena at Jersey Fresh that got removed for the 2** was the site of numerous falls in the 3***. It seems like anytime there is more than one fall at a single obstacle, there should be a protocol for immediately stopping and reviewing and adjusting if necessary. I get that removing an obstacle changes the competition for those who have already gone, but if it costs a human or equine life, does that really matter?

[Xctrygirl]

Yes but which of the “powers that be” are leading the reins on the so called next steps?

Should it be in the USA only? Should it be worldwide? Should there be a “Town Hall” meeting broadcast by web to talk to all who want to listen? And maybe a place where ideas from anyone who has them, can submit them>>>?

I trust that there will be a push to fix the fence side of this crisis.

I personally would like to see a miniature version of the injured jockey’s fund to help out riders, or their next of kin when the really bad stuff happens. I’m not ignoring the jump side of things but I think we (as a whole sport) should do more to help those who are injured along the way.

~Emily

[Xctrygirl]

Yes but which of the “powers that be” are leading the reins on the so called next steps?

Should it be in the USA only? Should it be worldwide? Should there be a “Town Hall” meeting broadcast by web to talk to all who want to listen? And maybe a place where ideas from anyone who has them, can submit them>>>?

I trust that there will be a push to fix the fence side of this crisis.

I personally would like to see a miniature version of the injured jockey’s fund to help out riders, or their next of kin when the really bad stuff happens. I’m not ignoring the jump side of things but I think we (as a whole sport) should do more to help those who are injured along the way.

~Emily

[Hilary]

Is it possible that we shy away from analyzing the falls because people fear actually finding out what happened? That they don’t want to be clinical they way a car accident would be analyzed? Because either they do not want to find blame? It’s easier to say freak accident?

I think we’ve all had plenty of accidents that could be considered freak or random, but there was a reason. The horse didn’t jump high enough. The horse stepped on himself. But then you need to determine the reason for that reason. did the rider set the horse up poorly? Was the light odd? Did he catch a stud on a boot?

If we do that, we do run the risk of assigning blame, and that’s somewhere we don’t like to go.

I think we should treat these accidents they way we do auto accidents. Use the photos, the videos everyone is taking, look at the skid marks and the marks on the horse and the fence.

Get an independent accident reconstructionist.

Thank you, Reed, for this new thread.

[IFG]

At this point, as William Fox-Pitt, Andrew Nicholson, and Will Faudree recover from serious accidents, two teens in Australia and one Brit in the US have died, I would say this is an international issue. Honestly, I am horrified at the recent level of carnage, and I have not even touched on the horse deaths.

[invinoveritas]

My issue is that eventing is too dangerous for horses. If a person wants to risk his or her life, fine. But eventing for horses is sometimes lethal. Gran prix racing where drivers sometimes die is assumption of risk. Horses do not have that choice.

I’m glad that OP is still around because he is smart and knowledgeable in many fields.

[JP60]

I made most of my statements in the other thread so I’m mainly here to support RAyer’s viewpoint.

What we may consider to be a “freak” accident is just an incident that had not yet been observed or investigated as to cause. Back in the late 50’s the British made the first jet commercial airliner, the Comet. After some time, Comet’s started falling out of the sky and at first people called them freak accidents. It was not till the took a fuselage and ran various tests did they discover it was not freak accidents, but the stresses of landings and takeoffs that created cracks that eventually caused the plane to break up in the air as G-forces broke open the pane.

It is true that in our sport we are dealing with some unknown variables. Horses have their own brains, the inputs during a ride are massively varied and no rider rides a course the same. Even while these might factor into the entry point of the accident, there is little that can be done to effect change. Better training system? Better understanding of fitness might help, but it is not germane to the root factor which is the fence itself.

This is why we need an open investigation board set to respond and evaluate every accident that involves death or serious injury to either team member. Only by knowing how a horse hit a fence and the resultant reaction, along with the potential why can we begin to make rational and thoughtful responses for better safety. We also need a process that does not pay lip service to recommendations by safety experts, but when backed by a preponderance of evidence, is required to react. Perhaps stronger enforcement of standards/rules should be applied as well. IE, did that table truly conform to the rules or did officials overlook it since “we’ve never had a problem before”.

The technology is here, today to help in performing investigations. Low cost cameras/recording devices, pressure sensors that can record not only point of impacts and how much. I bet there is more and if the argument is cost, considering that almost all of these deaths occur at the International level (looking at you FEI), I am certain they can scrape up the funds to make this happen. I would not expect such investigative measures to be applied at all shows, but certainly at 2* and above since as Denny commented, we are always running in the red zone.

We may not be able to prevent deaths at the upper levels completely, but being able to collect, analyze, and respond to real data may help in reducing risk even as we look to keep it challenging. It is one thing to say get rid of the V Vee (my vote) from a gut reaction, but better to get rid of it because it serves no purpose other then to injure riders or horses that make a mistake at the wrong moment. That we use science and facts to back such a decision up so it cannot resurface down the road.

[hldyrhrses]

I would like the riders get together at an event with a dangerous jump and say they aren’t going to jump the fence b/c its too dangerous! There shouldn’t be jumps at any level where there is zero room for error. Big square tables, insane jumps like the one at Badminton, that horrible looking hollowed out “v” shaped tree jump at Millbrook(???). The riders should demand an option. The riders are the ones putting their and their horses lives on the line. Us talking about it and demanding action isn’t working.