SHB new Hat ruling :(

I am from the hat on chin strap done up corner and I truly believe that to do otherwise is nuts.But I know that riding horses is not the only dangerous thing to do with them.I know of a woman killed loading a horse.It lashed out,caught her on the head and killed her.In my mind it comes down to civil liberties and while you are riding under rules, the rules apply and after that the decision is yours,no matter how daft.Equally though,is the responsibility so Don,t expect family and friends to put their lives on hold for you if you do have a devastating accident.
 
Tiddlypom said:
I am quite prepared to believe that some ridden activities are much less likely to result in a serious fall than others. Also, that some riders are much less likely to suffer a serious fall than other riders.

However, next time that I am plummeting earthwards, I would much rather prefer to be protected by adequate safety gear than relying on a bunch of statistics telling me that I am unlikely to suffer serious injuries from my impending contact with the ground :).
Click to expand...

In terms of my personal decision to wear a hat, I agree with you completely. But that's no way to go about making legislation.

I'm very mistrustful of statistics; I hope that came across in my post! They are often taken up as a banner by people who really don't have enough information to form an opinion.
 
I suppose I keep it as simple as - in the event of a fall (however unlikely that might be) will my chances of suffering a life changing brain injury/death be reduced by wearing a hat that causes very little inconvenience. Answer = yes so wear the hat.

Along similar lines of in the even of a car crash (also unlikely- have certainly fallen off Frank more than I have crashed the car) will my chances of suffering a life changing injury be reduced by wearing a seat belt. Answer = yes so I wear the belt ;)
 
spookypony said:
In terms of my personal decision to wear a hat, I agree with you completely. But that's no way to go about making legislation.

I'm very mistrustful of statistics; I hope that came across in my post! They are often taken up as a banner by people who really don't have enough information to form an opinion.
Click to expand...

I agree. Whilst I do wear a hat myself, in this case I think it is more about the insurance element and the cultural pressure to move towards enforced hat-wearing in competition. However I also think moaning about the change and loss of personal choice is silly, as it's a case of choose to compete or not...
 
Been off this for a couple of days but here goes. Yes of course I can choose to compete or not under whatever set of rules. But if a society I have competed with changes quite an important aspect of its dress code, then I would like to be convinced it is based on a logical reason. No evidence has been produced that ridden showing has caused so many head injuries or become so much more dangerous that the headgear needs changing. If it because of insurance, then why is anyone allowed to handle any horse on the showground without a safety helmet when leading and loading are much more vulnerable to waving hooves? Why are untrained members of the public, including minors allowed near potentially dangerous animals? Or is it simply the scourge of this country that officials just like to "gold plate" legislation?
In fact the only person I know who has sustained a head injury was a very experienced driver in a Private Drive class when the horse bolted and threw him out the carriage. It would completely change the nature of PD if hard hats were compulsory but why should they be exempt. And what makes anyone imagine that body protectors won't be next, after all they prevent crush injuries don't they? So what if all the stats are from Eventing, people fall off in Prelim Dressage too, therefore somebody, somewhere would be "saved"
 
SP, just to the point of Courtney K-D's injury, the reason it held so much power in the debate was, as you say, completely emotional and spoke to aspects of the culture of dressage. The argument for not insisting on helmets for dressage riders has always been that they *don't* get hurt and, more perniciously perhaps, that it's skill that keeps people safe. This argument didn't look as persuasive in the face of life changing injuries to a talented, successful popular rider. This makes no difference at all to the reality of the situation but it did bring home to many people in the community that it could, indeed happen to anyone. The debate was already ongoing - these things are even more difficult to push in the US - but it changed the dynamic from 'threat to personal freedom' to 'encouraging safety' in a very powerful way.

Even Jacquie's part was interesting. She is an extremely outgoing and popular rider, a bit of an iconoclast, successful but hardly keeping the top Europeans up nights. She also teaches a lot and is known as the sort of person who 'gives back' in part because she is not well off and has done what she's done in a very 'working class' (in so much as there is such a thing in elite equestrian competition!) way but also has to do a more than average amount of self promotion, fund raising etc to keep herself in horses. She had little to lose and arguably much to gain by being a trailblazer. And it caught fire with the huge group of parents and adult riders who fund the sport. Now it's 'okay' it is much easier for people who thought they would be penalised to join in and the pressure is going the other way. I doubt they could rely on such a groundswell in showing, which is so mired in tradition and, dare I say it, at least the perception of belonging to a 'certain' group. Modernity is a hard row to hoe in that situation!

I would also be interested in the debate about alternatives to traditional safety thinking. But then, as ably demonstrated by this thread, anything that doesn't nod to tradition is going to be met with resistance even if the technology looks promising
 
Last edited:
spookypony said:
Before I wade in, I want to clarify that I was brought up to wear a hat, and that I do so whenever I ride (with the exception of a very few rare occasions when I actually forgot. I suspect I've fallen on my head too often!). If I were not in the hat-wearing habit, I possibly wouldn't be here.

That being said, what bothers me about this debate every time it crops up is the way that single instances of unfortunate accidents get intermingled with statistics, which themselves are generally used without explanation of how the statistic was calculated, and based on what data. It's an emotive and sloppy way to go about constructing an argument. (And don't get me started on that weird H&S multiplication thingy, where people with no data beyond a gut feeling come up with arbitrary numbers on an arbitrary scale, multiply them together, and then expect the result to mean something. Generations of mathematicians are spinning in their graves!)

Every time we do anything remotely risky, we're at some level deciding if the risk is significant enough to take preventative measures, or if the potential reward is great enough. I am not from a body-protector-wearing culture. I'd never worn one before moving to the UK. Here, I wear it for XC, and for SJ only on the Spooky Pony, becaue he's not safe to jump (generally, I just don't jump him). I wore it for getting on a mare that I strongly suspected was too strong and sharp for me, but I do not wear if for normal riding, and I won't wear it if I choose to take him hunting. Statistically, there's probably about a 2% chance that I will come off him; far lower on a hack, and far higher in a charged situation in an open field, or when jumping. It could be argued that this chance is significant enough, that wearing a BP every time would be the sensible thing to do.

Nevertheless, because as a society, we're not (yet) used to insisting on BPs for adults, no-one is going to chew me out on a forum about it. Maybe they should? I haven't seen statistics on how likely a BP is to prevent serious injury; I'm sure they exist, and I'd really like to know under what circumstances the data were collected. Because I'm not acculturated to BP-wearing, I make an assessment when I get on about the likelyhood of getting dumped, and wear the BP under circumstances where I think it's warranted. If I am not wearing one, because (say) I'm just going for a hack in the woods and don't tend to get dumped then, and I do get dumped because there is a scary folding bed (that has itself been dumped :p ), then I ascribe that to freak circumstance not subject to statistical analysis. Such a freak circumstance certainly won't make me put on a BP for my next harmless hack, because if I started trying to prepare even for freak circumstances, then I'd be too nervous to get out of bed in the morning.

If I were not from a hat-wearing culture, I might think and act very similarly about risk assessment for hat wearing. As tragic as the life-changing accident suffered by the American rider while schooling a youngster was (didn't it just trip or something?), it's no argument for changing hat-wearing habits, because it's an isolated case that seems so statistically improbable as to be insignificant. Millions of people ride horses under similar "safe" circumstances every day, without coming off. A chance of one in millions (just how often do such freak accidents happen?) is not enough to convince me of anything (it's certainly less than the 2% of getting dumped by the Spooky Pony!). What is more convincing is if someone can show that the chance of any one specific rider having a significant fall at some point is rather high (which it probably is), and that in that fall, wearing a hat significantly reduces the likelihood of serious injury (which it probably does). But I strongly suspect that the chance of a significant fall is closely related to the activity being pursued. I can fully understand why a person might decide that they're exceedingly unlikely to come off in a particular circumstance, and are therefore willing to take the risk. (I imagine, for example, that your average stunt horse is a highly-trained animal of reasonably stable mental disposition!)

When it comes to making rules, my main concern is that all too often, such rules are based on emotive argumentation and not on a thorough understanding of statistical evidence. At worst, the two get muddled in an unhelpful way. I don't know what statistics were used in this particular case, so I can't comment on the specific situation.

I'm also very interested in Mike007's argument that the hat-testing procedures are so entrenched with and influenced by current practice, that R&D which goes back to first principles to try to find an optimal (but possibly very different) solution is effectively blocked. It wouldn't be the first time that scientists are well aware that there would be a better way of doing something, but that it would be economically unfeasible to change tracks completely (because the existing system is established and has infrastructure). (In a complete aside, I do wonder if that's why the British utilities provision is so crappy... :p ). Also, the link provided by another poster to the Swedish airbag-bicycle helmet thing was so interesting, because it's such a different concept. Mike007, can you provide any evidence for us to read?
Click to expand...

In this case statistics are very clear as the differences in head injuries in those wearing hats and those not wearing are staggering and very clear. Do you have any particular reason to mistrust these figures, e.g.:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002013839500176X
https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/_WMS/publications/wmj/pdf/104/2/50.pdf


As for Mike007's argument it is misleading. Hats are a relatively new inovation, when something new is invented it is pointless to test it against an ideal and currently unobtainable standard. The industry standard has to be created in relation to what is available and re-negotiated as what is available becomes better. If something revolutionary then comes up it does indeed take a bit of time for standards to be radically redrawn but Mike007's points about the inefficacy of hats are grossly exaggerated (see statistics above).
 
I agree re. Mike007...I would like some more information from him, to show why he thinks hats are not so effective.

Thank you Booboos, for the links. I can only read the abstract of the first one until I log in at uni. The second is very interesting, but there are several points which might be prone to misinterpretation. For example, on pp. 50--51, the author states that "Equine-related injuries are more common among female riders. In fact, female riders accounted for 62% of injuries cared for in EDs in 2002." He goes on to explain that this correlation is likely due to the preponderance of female riders. Nevertheless, the first sentence is misleading, and could easily be taken out of context to imply that any one woman is at greater risk. It should read something like, "Of the riders presenting with equine-related injuries, more were female than male". He cites a Swiss study on p. 52: "All 9 patients who had been kicked in the head had worn helmets and none suffered brain injury. Many of these patients did have maxillofacial injuries, however, and the authors recommended the use of face shields like those used by polo players." I'd want to investigate the Swiss study next: did they consider examining a possible correlation among shoeing and maxillofacial injuries? I bet not... Or among the type of behaviour that placed the person at risk of getting kicked in the first place? I bet also not... The rest of the article consists of a lot of "shoulds" and statements without any statistical support whatsoever. For example, the direction on p.53 that all riders should wear heeled footwear and use safety stirrups to prevent being dragged does not take into account other, possibly equally effective ways of doing this, such as caged stirrups. FWIW, I agree about the advisability of wearing a hat, but I really don't find that article convincing at all.
 
TarrSteps, as usual a very clear-eyed analysis of the rhetoric of the situation! In terms of swaying public opinion, the power of such case studies, as it were, is not to be denied!
 
Crikey, is this one still going ?

I think bubble wrap and full body armour should mandatory for both horse and rider at all times :p
 
spookypony said:
I agree re. Mike007...I would like some more information from him, to show why he thinks hats are not so effective.

Thank you Booboos, for the links. I can only read the abstract of the first one until I log in at uni. The second is very interesting, but there are several points which might be prone to misinterpretation. For example, on pp. 50--51, the author states that "Equine-related injuries are more common among female riders. In fact, female riders accounted for 62% of injuries cared for in EDs in 2002." He goes on to explain that this correlation is likely due to the preponderance of female riders. Nevertheless, the first sentence is misleading, and could easily be taken out of context to imply that any one woman is at greater risk. It should read something like, "Of the riders presenting with equine-related injuries, more were female than male". He cites a Swiss study on p. 52: "All 9 patients who had been kicked in the head had worn helmets and none suffered brain injury. Many of these patients did have maxillofacial injuries, however, and the authors recommended the use of face shields like those used by polo players." I'd want to investigate the Swiss study next: did they consider examining a possible correlation among shoeing and maxillofacial injuries? I bet not... Or among the type of behaviour that placed the person at risk of getting kicked in the first place? I bet also not... The rest of the article consists of a lot of "shoulds" and statements without any statistical support whatsoever. For example, the direction on p.53 that all riders should wear heeled footwear and use safety stirrups to prevent being dragged does not take into account other, possibly equally effective ways of doing this, such as caged stirrups. FWIW, I agree about the advisability of wearing a hat, but I really don't find that article convincing at all.
Click to expand...

I noticed the first point as well but I suspect it is because the study was limited to injuries and not surveys of the demographics of riders. I agree with you that it is probable that if one compares studes of who rides with who gets injured it may well be that there are more injuries amongst young women purely because there are more young women riding, not because somehow being young and female is a contributing factor (to be fair to the authors they do not suggest that being young and female is a contributing factor).

Yes some of their other claims are more speculative and I was not defending the use of any statistics at any time, but the facts on hats helping reduce the number of head injuries, which are very serious types of injury, are clear and difficult to refute.

Most of the available studies tend to focus on ridden injuries and hat wearing, I suspect because so few people wear hats when handling it will be difficult to get data. I do recall reading (a while back when looking into paediatric injuries in particular) that young children were particularly at risk from getting kicked in the head when handling purely because of their height. A horse kicking is likely to hit an adult in the torso or upper leg, but a shorter child gets kicked in the head which is immediately a much more serious injury.
 
Millymincepie said:
And what makes anyone imagine that body protectors won't be next, after all they prevent crush injuries don't they? So what if all the stats are from Eventing, people fall off in Prelim Dressage too, therefore somebody, somewhere would be "saved"
Click to expand...

no, afaik only the exo did and is no longer in production...

they are very limited in the protection they offer, and aren't likely to stop you becoming a vegetable.

As I said previously I'm not sure this is one of those things I would get my knickers in a twist about the stats (as a scientist). The pros/cons are pretty clear to me without them.
 
I think it is wise move as in showing there are a wide variety of people of differing riding ability and on horses some of which are not going to be easy rides. And people who perhaps are not that good riders and those on young or difficult horses who are probably most at risk are not always going to be sensible enough to wear a hard hat if they think it spoils the look and might have an impact on their placing.

The SHB are going to want to minimalize serious accidents at their shows as it will damage their reputation if there is an accident that could have been prevented and with the sueing culture they may be at risk of being sued if they are deemed to be negligent and something could have been done to make the activity safer and someone has a life changing accident. The more safety procedure they put in place the lower the insurance. If the insurance is higher they will have to pass on the costs of running the show on to competitors and members who then grumble as the prices go up. At a lot of RC shows now hard hats have to be worn at all time when mounted including the warm up areas.

As a half way measure they could say that hard hats should be worn in all novice classes and WH classes as these might be more risky a bit like the dressage rules which only allow the top hats at the higher levels.
 
As i'm sure everyone knows that it's law to have to wear a crash helmet to ride a motor bike or moped. A 50cc moped will only do about 30mph. A horse can do this speed and the rider is seated a lot higher up, so a fall has greater impact. Even if you are doing dressage, having a walk around the arena or a hack through the fields, a horse can go from 0 too very fast in a short distance and if there are fences or gate post around you don't want to be banging your head on one of them without some good head gear. Safety or fashion? i know which i prefer.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Sorry, all you traditionalist showing diehards, but this is inevitable. I have always found it quite strange that people will ride wearing an ornamental hat when there are alternatives which are functional as well as decorative.

Head injuries are not trivial. It may well be your friends and relatives who have to pick up the pieces if you insist on wearing inadequate headgear.

It needs an adjustment of what people consider to be 'elegant', but in time wearing a proper hat will become the new normal. Not all traditions are based in practicality.
Click to expand...

Well put :) x
 
http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2012/01/055.shtml#axzz2nZuycjA2

BP and Helmets are compulsory for racing in this country and good to see Rodeo starting to sport them too.

I have always worn helmets showing and it has never stopped me bringing home wide ribbons.

These are NZ showing rules currently:

Hats and Safety Helmets
a) A hard hat is generally described as a hunting cap, a bowler, protective headwear or a safety helmet.
b) Wearing a hard hat is compulsory for anyone competing on, working in or schooling or riding for any other reason a horse at an A & P Show or in any area considered to be for what ever reason a part of the Showgrounds.
c) All riders 16 and under must wear protective headgear, which includes a retaining harness secured to the shell at more than two points. Such headgear must be worn with the chinstrap properly adjusted and fastened when in the arena or ring, the practice area collecting rings or anywhere else within a Showgrounds.
It is strongly recommended that all riders particularly those jumping horses wear protective headgear conforming to the current NZ Safety Standard or an
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top