[vineyridge]

Is it even possible to tuck and roll with an inflated air vest? Knowing how to do that and being able to do it consistently would have prevented my compression fracture.

[whicker]

Viney,
I wondered the same thing about tuck and roll. I don't see how one could do a number of forward somersaults on the ground to dissipate the energy of the fall. Or keep rolling away from the horse. I have had the horse fall towards me and roll down a hill. I sped up my roll to keep ahead of him.

I found the backwards or back and sideways trajectories to be the ones that compression fractured my back.. and I didn't land on my back. I started a spin to avoid the back and landed on a seat bone instead. That drove the force up into the spine at an angle.

How about a thread or article on defensive falling maneuvers to help us?

[celtic_cross]

Well, that is certainly good to know as I've seen plenty of people stopped on course for a blown vest - and that is simply the only reason they're stopped.

Perhaps it's a training issue with jump judges. Perhaps it's not clear cut in the rules since there's not a lot of mention about air vests in the rules.

I've already told you, I'm NOT a rep in any way for either company.

CC, if officials stop a rider because their vest has blown, most likely it is because those officials have determined that the situation is dangerous and are stopping the rider under the dangerous riding rule. If a rider's vest blows and the officials don't stop him, that rider can stop and remove it or continue on. There is no rule which absolutely forces that rider off the course. To say or imply otherwise is misinformation.

[sisu27]

To those here more knowledgeable than I (everyone)....if you could ask these vest manufacturers to do some testing that would help convince people either way what would it be?

Is there an actual test that they could be doing that they aren't? Have they done the test and the results are not in their favor so therefore we don't know about it?

Some posters on this topic appear to have a personal vendetta with the airvest companies and some appear to have genuine and intelligent questions for them. For the rest of us that are trying to make an informed decision it is difficult to know what to believe.

I know of a few UL riders that wear them happily and are not sponsored....I asked. But they are horseman not scientists.

So when I read these threads it becomes more difficult to know what the answer is given what appears to be a large amount of misinformation and personal opinion.

[Cindyg]

considering spending hundreds of dollars on an air vest, to use it in a way that is not the manufacturer's recommended application (i.e. using it alone, without a standard safety vest)

The air vests aren't to be worn without a traditional body-armor vest? Even for riding casually on the flat?

[Badger]

The air vests aren't to be worn without a traditional body-armor vest? Even for riding casually on the flat?

From the ProAir description, the manufacture recommends that the vest be worn with a conventional body protector. They say that some riders tell the manufacturer that they prefer to wear it on their own. But I interpret the following as the manufacturer recommending their vest be worn with a conventional body protector:

Should it be worn with or without a body protector? The safest way to wear the ProAir is in conjunction with a conventional body protector. Some riders who use the ProAir at home or while hunting tell us they prefer to use it on its own — where they previously would have worn no safety equipment at all. But for UK competition, the ProAir must be used with a BETA-approved Level 3 body protector — such as the Racesafe 2010, on which the P2-RS is built. The Point Two ProAir is fully reusable, and requires servicing annually or after every six falls.

[deltawave]

As a medic, I can tell you numerous stories of people in car crashes, who have serious bruising from seatbelts

What is a "medic", and do medics avail themselves of the data that show safety belts reduce FATALITIES? Bruises go away. A head through the windshield is permanent, usually.

This sort of fallacious argument has a name, and is the same as "my grandmother smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years and lived to be 90" or "my friend's neighbor's cousin's doctor told her that if she HAD been wearing a helmet she would have DIED". Random anecdotes do not negate mountains of evidence.

Is there an actual test that they could be doing that they aren't? Have they done the test and the results are not in their favor so therefore we don't know about it?

Probably. Possibly. Doing tests is difficult, expensive, and doesn't always produce the data you're hoping for. There is no requirement to report data that doesn't support your product. And if people will swear by and buy the product anyway, why bother?

[Sannois]

The air vests aren't to be worn without a traditional body-armor vest? Even for riding casually on the flat?

Do that open with so much force that it could cause a rib injury or something??

[kdow]

Actually, I can probably provide a better justfication as to how and why airvests cause spinal injuries than the makers can in defending their products. I have already put together a fundamental outline for a research program that I will submit.

And I do research in spinal reconstruction.

Please add me to the collection of people with an internet crush. (We're going to get to read this stuff if it ends up being all written up properly, right?)

[Janet]

As a medic, I can tell you numerous stories of people in car crashes, who have serious bruising from seatbelts. I still wear one. People have a legit argument that seatbelts can cause injury. We still wear them though.

My husband was in a car crash and suffered severly bruised ribs from the seat belt. The doctor at the hospital siad they had never seen worse briuses without broken ribs.

But they also said that, without the seat belt, he would have been dead.

[poltroon]

If the air vest companies want to say, "we're offering this product, we think it could help, here's our data, decide for yourselves" I would be much more supportive.

But instead, they're being quite aggressive in their marketing about them "saving lives" to the point that there are people who feel almost an obligation to wear one, that of Course There's No Doubt when in fact there is significant concern.

I think that for some people they make sense and I don't object to them being sold while honest research is done. I object to them being sold as if that research has been done and has unequivocal findings.

Let me put it this way: it's obvious to all of us, right, that a helmet made of metal would protect your head better than one made of styrofoam and a thin plastic shell, right? And yet, the data would show our intuition to be tragically wrong.

[FairWeather]

I've actually talked to a few pro's about them (and why they weren't worn by many teams at the Games this summer) and I was told that they (ULR's that I spoke to) didn't feel they were safe at that level (Advanced on up), and in fact cause issues when you have minor falls which then become worse when a vest blows and scares a horse. The comment was that they were helpful when riding young horses when you have a chance of getting bucked off, but going Advanced when the risk of falls is more of the rotational variety, not so much.
Interesting that the majority of points came from a rider sponsored by one of the air jacket companies. Sad

[RAyers]

Let me add another, somewhat more relevant analogy.

The better the body armor for soldiers, the more shattering (cominution and amputation) of the bones we see (based on a study in the American Orthopaedic Journal and presented as part of Combat Life Support training). So we lose penetrating and perforating injuries and now get basically internal trauma underneath the armor as a result of impact.

[poltroon]

Let me add another, somewhat more relevant analogy.

The better the body armor for soldiers, the more shattering (cominution and amputation) of the bones we see (based on a study in the American Orthopaedic Journal and presented as part of Combat Life Support training). So we lose penetrating and perforating injuries and now get basically internal trauma underneath the armor as a result of impact.

:-o

That's really alarming.

[EnzoDbr9]

One thing that makes me worried about air vests is how they interact with the pinneys that many HTs provide.

[Muffin]

There is a session on air vests at the annual convention. Anyone planning on going?

[wildlifer]

Let me add another, somewhat more relevant analogy.

The better the body armor for soldiers, the more shattering (cominution and amputation) of the bones we see (based on a study in the American Orthopaedic Journal and presented as part of Combat Life Support training). So we lose penetrating and perforating injuries and now get basically internal trauma underneath the armor as a result of impact.

Ow. I think I would rather be perforated then amputated. But that's just me.

I'll stick to my RP -- when I was flipped over my horse's head at a gallop and landed on my back on top of a steeplechase coop (this is why we don't jump ahead), I was thinking one thing: "Wow, this vest is awesome, that didn't even hurt." As my horse galloped away while I sat on the ground with his bridle in my hand, I was thinking......well, that's not PG.

It did its job. If one says "my air vest saved my ribs," I'd counter with, "I bet the foam beneath it did." I can't prove it but as a scientist with a (I like to think) consistent working knowledge of physics and critical thinking, well, it just seems obvious.

There's not a thing in the world that's going to save you when a 1400 lb event horse lands on you after a 6 foot fall, if it even inflates, except maybe blind chance. But if you want to throw $800 at a marketing team, that's a personal choice.

[NMK]

Celtic_Cross: Just want to clear something up that you wrote about the Two Point Hybrid (all one piece) vest. Once it has inflated, it then automatically deflates rather quickly. So if you do have a mishap in the warm up as you suggested, you do not have to take it off. It does not stay inflated. I can check the manual to see the actual timing of it but in my experience its only been a few minutes before it fully deflates and can be used as a regular vest without the air function.

Nancy

[Blugal]

There's not a thing in the world that's going to save you when a 1400 lb event horse lands on you after a 6 foot fall, if it even inflates, except maybe blind chance. But if you want to throw $800 at a marketing team, that's a personal choice.

Actually, the Exo vest was designed to do just this. It is really unfortunate that the Exo did not have the marketing machine behind it that the air vest companies do. I can imagine the Exo v2.0 being quite a good piece of gear.

[wanderlust]

Let me add another, somewhat more relevant analogy.

The better the body armor for soldiers, the more shattering (cominution and amputation) of the bones we see (based on a study in the American Orthopaedic Journal and presented as part of Combat Life Support training). So we lose penetrating and perforating injuries and now get basically internal trauma underneath the armor as a result of impact.

Question... are you seeing a one-for-one replacement of penetrating/perforating with internal trauma/shattering (i.e. a bullet wound that would have killed someone is now hitting the body armor and breaking ribs)... or because there are less penetrating wounds, that secondary category of wound type has now become the most frequent? Or is it some combination of the two?

I ask out of personal curiosity- I just spent the weekend with a bunch of combat medics and military doctors/surgeons all with multiple deployments, and it was interesting to hear about what they saw injury-wise and treatment protocol 5-10 years ago vs. now in military field medicine.