From: Darcy
Dear Jessica, I am putting together some guidelines for my students and their families to know when they need to replace their helmets. I teach about 30 lessons a week and I don't let anyone ride without a helmet. The problem is that I am seeing some people riding in helmets that I know are damaged. Some of the riders I saw them fall in their helmets, and other ones fell when I wasn't there and told me about it at their next lesson. I know that helmets lose their protection after they are damaged, but people get cheap at the strangest times and I have had several parents tell me that they would replace a broken helmet instantly but that one that just got "bumped" doesn't need replaced. Well of course this makes me crazy because I know better! But it is hard to get people to spend money on a helmet, they are like "Well I spent $60 on this helmet for my kid last year, and I spend $30 every week for her lessons, and now you want me to buy a whole nother helmet just because she fell off her horse and it got dirty?" I know that when I have kids, I'd buy them new helmets in a heartbeat! It's only been one year since I made helmets a rule here, and people have been pretty good about it, but I need to get them to understand about replacing helmets and why it's important.
Can you help me with my guidelines, please? Here is what I have so far.
IT'S TIME FOR A NEW HELMET WHEN
If I were you, I would do several things to help your riders learn about how helmets work and why it's important to replace them when they've done their job of protecting the rider's head.
Direct them to the True Helmet Stories on the HORSE-SENSE website: http://www.horse-sense.org/stories/ They'll be able to read about individual riders' experiences, told in their own words. This tends to be much more effective than a lecture. ;-)
Have a group meeting and show the video "Every Time...Every Ride...". This is very powerful, and will make everyone aware of how helmets are tested. That will reinforce your reminders about helmet replacement.
As for your list - I'd pretty much say "replace a helmet (a) after it sustains any strong impact, (b) when it's five years old even if it has never sustained any sort of impact, and (c) right now, if it has been improperly stored.
Direct impact from a fall is one reason to replace a helmet. Direct impact NOT from a fall is another - I once watched in horror as a rider rode headfirst into one of the side support beams of an indoor arena. That impact could be heard both inside and outside the arena! The rider then slid off her horse, landing on her backside instead of her head, but the helmet was almost split in two from the impact. Some children - and some parents - are very literal, so you'd better make it clear that ANY impact that damages a helmet poses a risk to the rider. If a rider falls on her head, her helmet will be damaged; if she crashes head-first into a solid object, her helmet will be damaged even if she stays on her horse, and - this is one that many riders don't think about - if a helmet falls from, say, the top of a row of tack lockers onto a concrete floor, IT WILL BE DAMAGED. When a riding helmet sustains a hard impact, the interior structure of that helmet will crumple whether the rider falls or not, and whether the rider's head is IN the helmet or not.
Age is another reason to replace a helmet - teach your riders and their families that a five-year-old helmet will need to be replaced even if it has sustained NO impacts in those five years. The material weakens over time, losing its structural integrity and making it less effective. It's difficult for some people to understand this, but sometimes you can help them get the idea if you explain that helmets are like sports shoes. People used to keep their sports shoes for far too long, but most people today are aware that those shoes (walking, running, tennis, basketball, etc.) need to be replaced regularly, because the materials that provide the cushioning and support lose their integrity over time, and the shoes will not serve their intended purpose after six months or a year, whether they've been used daily or whether they've spent all those months in a closet or under the bed. If they can understand the concept as it relates to sports shoes, they can certainly understand why the concept is even MORE important as it relates to equestrian helmets designed to protect human brains.
Storage is another reason to replace a helmet. If a helmet is stored somewhere hot, or in direct sunlight, or - hottest of all - in the trunk of a car, it will deteriorate very quickly. If any of your riders are keeping their helmets in car trunks for the sake of convenience, you'll need to persuade them to change their ways - and replace those helmets NOW.
Instead of trying to list every possible reason for replacing a helmet, I'd keep the list as short and as general as possible if I were you. "Impact, age, storage" covers just about everything that can happen to a helmet. If you try to list all of the specific possibilities, you'll be less effective. When lists become too long, detailed, and complicated, some people won't read them at all. Others - not many, but some - will read the lists very carefully and say "Well, that doesn't apply to ME because you didn't mention THIS specific circumstance" (e.g., "Yes,okay, my HELMET had a crash, but I wasn't wearing it, my brother was, so I didn't think that counted."). ;-)
Finally, you can gently point out that a new helmet costs less than a single visit to the emergency room! If the cost of a new helmet is an issue for some of your students' parents, make it clear that helmets are a non-negotiable rule at your barn, that protective schooling helmets can be purchased for $30 (the cost of a lesson), and that if need be, you are willing to have a student SKIP her lesson one week so that her parents can re-assign the $30 lesson fee to the purchase of a new ASTM/SEI protective equestrian helmet. Sometimes this is the most effective suggestion of all, because it shows how strongly you believe in protecting your riders.
Jessica
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