Thursday, June 02, 2016

Freak Riding Accident? Hardly.

Horsenetwork.com - Full Article

May 2016
by Anna Blake

The horse world has lost some good riders in the last few weeks. Sadly, it happens all too often. Horses can be unpredictable and people get hurt. Some of it is unavoidable and some of it is totally preventable.

Two of the most recent stories were especially hard: One was a 27-year-old professional barrel racer with wedding plans and the other was a professional trainer who was respected as the most experienced rider in her mounted posse. These two women had much in common: they were both professionals, both very experienced riders, and both died from extensive head injuries as the result of a fall on pavement. And now they are both profoundly mourned by their friends and families, and yes, their horses, too, I suspect.

I always feel it’s in poor taste to mention helmets at a time like this. It feels mean-spirited, no matter how well stated. And it’s too damn late for these committed horse women. The problem is that someone has always just died, so to be polite, helmets would never be mentioned.

These riders had another thing in common. News reports used the term “freak accident” in the headline. Do these reporters live in a shoe-box? There’s nothing freak about a riding accident. Emergency rooms treat about 15,000 equine-related head injuries a year. And that doesn’t count other broken bones...

Read more here:
http://horsenetwork.com/2016/05/freak-riding-accident-hardly/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=freak-hardly

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said......and it's always the first thing that pops into one's head when they hear stories like these. "Was she/he wearing a helmet?" Same with bicycles. I see so many parents out bicycle riding with their kids, now the kids have a helmet on but the parents don't. What kind of example does that portray and what happens to the kids when mom and/or dad are critically or seriously injured in an accident in front of them because they were not wearing a helmet?