July 13, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
Eventing falls research
As I have written a lot about eventing falls and the need for cross country design changes, I thought I should mention some recent Australian research which followed up with approx 900 riders involved in accidents. It found that most riders thought they were mainly to blame for the fall and it could have been avoided . Other factors like illness, spectators, weather, poor fence design, equipment failure were small in number.
While I was initially surprised by this, I realised that this is likely to be the case for any sort of accident as the rider is supposed to be in control of the situation. Isn’t the same true in most car driving accidents?
Some other interesting findings were that few riders landed on their heads and quite a few landed feet first. Also riders felt that back protectors were effective in reducing injury. Wearing a back protector can be a little uncomfortable at first but I would strongly recommend one for cross-country. Like anything, the more you wear it the more you become used to it.
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