While safety vests are becoming standard gear in horse sports, current data doesn’t yet prove that the devices are truly effective in protecting equestrians from injury. The need for further research is an early finding from the Fédération Equestre Internationale’s newly launched Equestrian Safety Vest Working Group. Stephanie Bonin, Ph.D., who chairs the group’s scientific panel, says that her team has reviewed nearly all of the existing literature on injury mechanisms in equestrian falls and the efficacy of both foam body protectors and air vests. 

“We have riders currently using these devices,” Bonin said. “Sometimes it’s because it’s regulated—like the foam body protectors for cross-country—so there’s a belief that there is a level of protection by the use of them. It’s been difficult to really quantify what that is.”

With the use of vests on the rise, the working group aims to advance rider protections with independent research and testing. Mark Hart, the FEI Medical Committee chairman, is also chairing the new ESVWG. His medical background qualifies him for the work, but he also has equestrian bona fides from coming up as an “eventing dad.” 

“We all want to make riding safer as much as possible, whether it’s the riders—who are the ultimate end-goal users—national federations, and manufacturers too, along with the standards bodies,” Hart said.

The ESVWG is comprised of two collaborating groups: a scientific panel and a national federation advisory panel. The scientific panel includes international experts in the fields of biomechanical engineering, injury modeling, medicine and manufacturing. The advisory panel is made up of representatives from various national federations, with the goal that they engage their regional stakeholders and coordinate fundraising for research projects. (See the group’s full list of members here.)

Real-World Research And Testing

The scientific panel plans to gather data on relevant riding injuries—especially those occurring in the head, neck, spine, ribs and chest—recreating injury conditions and developing new testing modalities. Bonin says that this project is a chance to make progress in a field where empirical research has been sparse.

“We lack critical data on how and what specific injuries occur during falls and how protective equipment performs under real-world conditions,” Hart said in a press release issued Thursday by the FEI announcing the group’s launch. “Athletes and others in the community are asking important, constructive questions relating to how air vests perform in real-world settings, how they affect the athlete’s movement, and whether their use might influence the horse’s behavior. These insights are essential and are helping to drive the discussion toward more effective and evidence-based safety solutions.”

The ESVWG plan to tap into databases that have collected data, including injury reports and videos of riders that have fallen and sustained injuries at competitions, in recreational riding, and across disciplines, including racing. Analyzing accidents across a range of conditions helps the scientists characterize the types of injuries riders sustain based on variables like body orientation during the fall or type of landing surface.

“All that information can be used to then reproduce those impact scenarios with computer-based simulations,” Bonin said. “We take real world conditions—real world falls—and reproduce that in a laboratory setting. That ultimately can become the basis for proposing how these devices, foam body protectors and air vests, could be tested in a laboratory for certification.”

In laboratories, experiments might use anthropomorphic dummies or cadavers to recreate the injury conditions and evaluate the impact of a safety vest. In a computer simulation, the scientists can explore the impact of a vest with different variables, virtually. 

“You can change the impact speed, you can change the impact orientation,” Bonin said “You can change the body protector that they’re wearing and see if that influences what the model shows as a response during an impact.”

Hart said the working group’s commitment to independent, third-party research is essential for understanding how well safety vests truly work in their current iterations, and to drive meaningful improvements. 

“You need solid, scientific, evidence-based data or evidence-based testing,” Hart said. “In the scientific world, it has to be transparent and reproducible and peer-reviewed. You have to put the data out there so you can ensure that the integrity of the data is very high.

“We have to make sure the science is sound and that there’s good information to make these decisions or push the design of the vest, for the testing or the certification bodies, to make sure that we have the best data available to create those standards,” he added.

Seeking Input From Diverse Stakeholders

In developing the ESVWG, Hart thought carefully about whose perspectives are essential to ensuring that the process is both rigorous and inclusive. 

“The scientific panel and [national federation panel] very consciously tried to get geographic representation, gender representation, academic and non-academic organization representation,” he said. “So it really brings the richness of those different backgrounds into the project,” Hart said. “The end result: People feel more confident that there aren’t any biases and that it is independent.”

In an effort to ensure robust representation in the project, Hart has also created two additional focus groups: one representing athletes and another for manufacturers.

“They can be involved in questioning some of the outcomes coming out throughout the whole process, so we don’t get to the end and then find out that there were some important questions from some of the stakeholders that weren’t answered,” he said. 

Bonin says that already, this work has been gratifying. She’s excited about the opportunity for the panel to be on the cutting edge of research around safety vests, independently of companies who have a monetary interest in their popularity.

“I’m enthusiastic, yes, with lots of exclamation points,” said Bonin, a senior biomechanical engineer in the injury biomechanics group for a company called MEA Forensic who is also an equestrian. 

“The area of biomechanics and understanding injury mechanisms, for me personally, is very interesting, because this is right in my field,” she continued. “But then also just to think of it as a bit of giving back as a rider and being able to give back to the community; I also feel personal gratification and being able to do that as well.”

Hart hopes that in improving the testing protocols and independent research around body protectors and air vests, the working group will also improve the culture of horse sports.

“I think from an organizational point of view, there’s been a new emphasis on welfare, whether it’s the horse, but also the rider, both at an international and national level,” he said. 

“How do we make it safer, both for the wellness of the rider, but also the wellness of the sport?” he asked.