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Obviously, or not I guess, it doesn’t include cases where the rider didn’t get examined by ambulance personnel.
Broken collar bones a few times both with and without it, although the common factor was impact on the side of the shoulder rather than a brace pushing on the bone itself. I’ll take damaged collarbones shoulders and chests over a broken neck any day. The only area I don’t see it helping is a force down through the spine...but there isn’t anything that could help in that situation.
1 month ago I crashed very hard. bruised the entire top of my head,large knot on right side of face ear level (googles hitting?) jaw wouldn't open fully for 2 weeks.brand new troy lee with mips. visor screw sheared away as designed. so thank you to troy and the inventor of mips. it saved my brain. I broke t3 and 4 into pieces. 2 rods and 10 screws. I was wearing an atlas. my neck was very swollen and rainbow of bruising. witness and surgeon/drs are sure the atlas brace saved my butt from being much worse. I had bruises where the 4 posts of the brace contact the body. the make you think moment I started my bike that day and realized I left my brace on the truck as I was heading to the track. turned around and put it on. I never had an issue with comfort of the new atlas design. the force and energy was loaded through the brace I can see and feel it. I am a believer and yes I know every crash is different. change my angle by a few degrees maybe nothing is broke. maybe its worse. you moto guys know when normal people say something was violent or a hard hit. well from a fellow moto guy this was a nasty one. so im thankful I can feel the pain and will be good eventually. after seeing others hurt I thought I would never want to be laying there wondering if a brace would have saved me. hopefully this helps someone. ride smart and safe brothers.
The Shop
Since 10 years is a long time and the usage of neck braces has fluctuated quite a bit during this period, it is even a reasonable request to see the data on a biannually spaced plot (or something like it), paired with the ratio of riders who do wear a neck brace to begin with at that specific point in time.
For all we know the numbers published in those graphs, if we had the ratio of riders wearing a neck brace at that point available, could just as well point to neck braces causing more/worse injuries!
I personally think that many neck braces (perhaps not all) do more good than harm. But I don't know, and this study really isn't done in a properly scientific way so it didn't clear up anything in that regard. Great marketing, however.
Problem #1: We have no data for riders that fell, but got up without reporting an injury. This would be the optimal outcome for wearing a neck brace, but this study does nothing to tell us whether the neck brace helps with that or not.
Problem #2: The math. For item #1, they mention an 89% greater risk of cervical spine injury. Problem one, is the math is just wrong. 26 divided by 239 is 11%, so they are saying 89% more likely. But that's not how you calculate a liklihood. Instead, what they are calculating is that "of reported cervical spine injuries, only 11% were wearing a neck brace". Or, they could say "there were over 9 times as many neck injuries without a neck brace".
But both of those would still not be meaningful, because there is a different rate of patients wearing neck braces. So it would be a little more valuable to divide injuries by patients (again this is still not terribly helpful, because we don't know the rate of non-injury). They had 3,803 patients with neck braces, and 26 cervical spine injuries, for a rate of 0.7% cervical spine injury with a neck brace. They had 4,726 patients without neck braces and 239 cervical spine injuries, for a rate of 5.1% cervical spine injuries. NOW, we at least have a rough estimate of rate of injury. If we divide those rates, we get 7.4. So you could say a cervical neck injury is over 7 times more likely. OR, we take the increase in injury rate (5.1% - 0.7% = 4.4%) and divide by the starting rate (0.7%) and get a 629% increase in cervical spine injuries.
Also, they mention 901 of the patients did not indicate "yes" or "no" for a neck brace. If they were injured, were they included in the data?
You need a total number, you can not make a statistic without a total number or any relation to a total number.
Or at least I don't know how to compensate that with "simple math"...
That's like saying only 20 guys broke their back riding an electric bike.
So electric bikes must be safer (ignoring the fact that only a low percentage of MX riders use electric bikes).
- If neck braces make it harder to turn your head, maybe it could lead to more frequent crashing.
- Neck braces could make riders feel safer, and willing to take more chances.
- Neck braces could make riders more conscious of crashing, and take less chances.
- Maybe beginner-type riders are more likely to wear neck braces, and more likely to fall. Or, are beginners REALLY cautious and LESS likely to fall?
There are many variables which could change the crash rate in either direction.
Edit (perhaps this should have been in another post entirely...): I understand (or rather, I think I understand) that you are saying that it is okay to use the gathered data on the injured riders and simply use that to deduce the percentage of riders wearing a neck brace in total by assuming that the ratio is the same. That however, would possibly (and probably) skew the results heavily in either direction unless neck braces have no impact (negative or positive) on the injury rate what so ever. After all, if the reports conclusion is to be presumed correct, then the ratio of neck brace wearers who are severely injured compared to the ones who did not wear one would be a lot smaller than the same ratio among riders in total (since neck brace riders more often, according to this data, would escape injury and thus not need medical care).
I'm not saying that all of that data is without merit or interest, it surely is interesting and noteworthy, but it surely cannot be used to make any "this settles it" kind of statements. Well, according to me at least.
As all the braces evolved I believe they are now a viable safety device and I wear one at all times. I happen to wear the LEATT but like the ATLAS also. With a low profile and the dual thoracic struts and the fact that they are designed to snap off at a specific pressure I believe they have come a long way. I believe the choice is a personal one and the advantages or disadvantages are up to each individual. I like that someone has at least compiled some numbers of some sort even though it may not be complete. Either way nobody should be damned for wearing or not wearing one.
Pit Row
And the data provided shows that riders "who crashed and were injured" while wearing a neck brace faired far better than those who weren't.
With "total" number I didn't mean that you need to know the number of all the riders on the planet who wear a brace, and those who don't.
I meant the total number of these patients (8529 in this case) - I never read these numbers...
sorry :>
Just disregard everything I posted. I never read these numbers.
If the total is 8529, 4726 wear no brace and 3803 wear a brace then the statistic does make perfect sense.
I just saw the statistics with no relation to any population size of either side.
With that you can generalize, like MPJC says, and use these numbers representatively
FYI I thought the exact same thing and had to re read the article to look for the sample size.
I think they are a good piece of protection with the proper design. My early stage Leatt just rested on the spinal column which puts all the force on a 1” x 1.5” space. The brace needs to rest on the shoulder blades or more surface area of the back
I’m not so much worried about my throat as I am my spinal cord.
This is a polarizing topic for sure
With that said, braces completely have a place and some designs are better than other. I would love to get another omega neck brace that had an open front section and some other features that I believe were beneficial.
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