A new law has been introduced in Florida making the wearing of helmets compulsory for junior riders under the age of 16. The new law has also been named ‘Nicole’s law‘ after a 12 year old girl who was killed in a riding accident in 2006.

The last time I rode without a riding hat was in my teens, which was more than 25 years ago in the UK. I can’t remember what prompted me to go from riding with a hat most of the time to all of the time. I thought that the use of riding hats was compulsory in the UK but from some initial research on the internet, my current understanding is that it is compulsory for riders under 14 years of age on the road in the UK. I’ll investigate this further.

I don’t know the US federal or state laws regarding the wearing of a riding hat. If anyone knows more about this, I’d be very interested in this information.

Not only is the wearing of a hat important but the type of hat and its fitting is also important.  With safety levels and design improving all the time, I would recommend buying a design of the current highest standard and getting this properly fitted. The fitting should be checked on a regular basis as this will change with wear.

The UK Government is considering a reduction in the speed limit on single lane rural roads from 60mph to 50mph. This is being welcomed by the British Horse Society although this proposal does not go all the way in reducing speeds to the levels they would like given the number of riders on such roads. Anything to help the safety of horses and riders, cars and their passengers sounds like a good idea to me.

I have written many times about the dangers of eventing but even I was shocked by a statistic of an accident investigator at a recent inquest of an UK eventing rider death last year. In their opinion, there is of 30% chance of serious injury or death from a somersault fall. The coroner said he intended to write to British Eventing about making the sport safer.

I guess the other statistic we need to determine is the probability of a somersault fall! I always knew I was lucky to survive mine as a teenager but seeing such a number really brought it home to me.

Horses were the number one cause of animal-related deaths in Australia between 2000 and 2006 according to research done by the National Coroners Information System in Australia.

Of the 128 animal-related deaths during the period, 40 involved horses, 20 cattle and 12 dogs. By comparison, some of the more dangerous animals numbered a lot less with sharks killing 11 people, crocodiles or alligators 4, snakes 8 and spiders 3.

The numbers are a bit of a surprise but people do interract with domesticated animals much more frequently, so if the report showed the percentage of the interractions with the various animal types, the domesticated animals wouldn’t appear as dangerous.

I was taught from a young age to be careful when handling horses as they are both powerful and unpredictable. Experience over the years has just confirmed this to be true.

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.