Wearing a Helmet
For those of you who have had the chance to see me at an expo, you know that there’s one important theme about riding that I stress in almost every demo. Safety.
On average, every four days someone dies from a horse-related incident, and there are more than 75,000 trips to the hospital every year. And those are just the injuries that are reported.
There are quite a few things we can do to ensure our personal safety on a horse. But none of them are as effective as one simple product -- and that’s the riding helmet. Before you stop reading, believing this is going to be another lecture on wearing a helmet, let me tell you that you will learn more than that here.
While I think that we should all wear helmets, I know if you keep reading you’ll understand more than you knew before about the dangers of NOT wearing one. I’m not going to simply remind you that you could get a head injury without one. We all know that already. I want to explain more about how head injuries occur and just exactly how violent they can be -- even in a low-impact situation.
First, let me point out that I don’t wear a helmet to protect the OUTside of my head. I wear it to protect the INside of my head.
To begin with, let’s examine a little bit about our head. It weighs more than most people think and has quite the effect on how the rest of our body moves. Hence the saying: where the head goes, the body follows (and they aren’t just talking about thinking your way to a new direction of travel). Since it sits on top of our neck, which is quite strong, and can pivot and roll in most any direction, it’s basically a sphere sitting on the top of whip antennae. As we fall or get bucked around, our head rolling about at the end of our neck has a huge effect on what our body can do and where it’s going to fall.
When some type of force causes us to move in one direction and the ground or another obstacle stops our movement, the organs inside our body keep moving. Our stomachs don’t spill out onto the ground because our bodies hold us together. Inside our head, our brain is suspended in fluid. And when we suddenly stop moving, our brain keeps moving and collides with the inside of our skull. Our neck can actually act as a cushioning effect depending on the angle we strike our heads or can act as additional force if it becomes the “whip”. But it’s because of this collision inside of our heads that we need the helmet.
As I said above, most people think that the helmet is only for the outside of the head. But in truth, it’s also for the inside of the head. Our skull can take quite a blow, but because it doesn’t absorb energy effectively, the energy from the blow is often transferred into an injury to the brain inside the skull. When we wear a helmet, the helmet doesn’t just protect our skull from cracking, it also absorbs energy and prevents the excessive transfer of energy into the brain. The helmet cushions the blow to the head and lessens the impact, which then allows the brain to come to rest more softly against the skull instead of slamming into it and causing damage.
As a rider who never wore a helmet and a rider who’s never had a head injury, how did I decide to take off my cowboy hat and wear one? How did I learn to wear one if I didn’t have the “I am an injured rider, and now I have seen the light” syndrome? Simple -- I educated myself about injuries in the real world.
There was child in our neighborhood who came off the back of a horse when the horse reared while standing in place, and the child fell off backwards into the arena dirt and didn’t survive. It was not a bucking flying crashing dismount. It was a rear and slide off the horse backwards without being able to break the fall prior to impact.
A woman riding her horse at a walk on a trail she rode nearly every day near her house came off when her horse tripped and fell suddenly. She fell over the horse’s shoulder in a classic forward dive and hit her helmeted head on a small rock. Even at that slow impact the helmet cracked (which was good because that’s part of how they absorb shock and prevent injury).
A friend of mine came off of a horse at a slow canter, but fell backwards and couldn’t break his fall. The result was a permanent brain injury.
Last but perhaps most frightening was to learn that many deaths caused in a barroom fight are not due to chairs and pool cues cracking skulls, but rather due to the fact that the intoxicated participants can’t break their fall when they’re struck and fall to the ground, striking their heads with the assistance of the neck “whip” and causing severe injury or death.
The point of sharing these true stories is that, in each of the incidents, no one was riding out of control. No one was being slammed into the ground from sky high bucks. Even in the case of the fight, no one was body slammed head first into the ground. They all simply fell without being able to break their fall. In the case of the fighters, they only fell the distance of their body height -- and in many cases this was enough force to result in death.
It took a long time for me to come around to the idea of wearing a helmet, and I don’t actually wear a helmet just for myself. I’m still stubborn as always when it comes to what I’ll do for myself. I wear a helmet for those that I love. I have a young daughter, and I can’t imagine telling her that I can no longer chase her through the house because I’m in a wheel chair because I was too careless or lazy or stubborn or vane to put on a helmet. Whether you’re a father, grandfather, uncle, mother, grandmother, aunt or just a great friend to others, why in the world would you burden them with your increased injuries because you didn’t want to wear a helmet? Why would you deprive them of your company? If you won’t wear a helmet for yourself, then do it for the people who care about you.
As for the type of helmet you should wear, I have a few things to say on that, too.
As for the type of helmet I personally wear… You can see it on my website (http://www.horsethink.com/Helmet.htm). I liked them so much that I began selling them. I chose it because it was the first one that was comfortable, it had a unique design, it was light weight, and it breathes well. It fits lower on my head, and I don’t feel like I have something perched on top of my head – it has a nice low profile. The sides are cut up over the ears, and it’s cut longer in back to cover more of the base of the skull giving slightly more protection in that area.
Putting on a helmet isn’t about losing your independent, cowboy identity while trail riding. It’s about protecting yourself so that when we meet at a clinic or an expo I can see your identity shine through your smile as you tell me about your “latest and greatest ride” and your funniest “dismont” all the while knowing that you can laugh about it because you were wearing your helmet.
If not for you …for the ones you love. Thanks, and safe rides.
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