Safety

Why is a good fitting, well adjusted helmet so important?

The job you want your helmet to do is to help absorb impact force when your have a fall, or when you are unlucky enough to be kicked by a horse. If your helmet does not help absorb this “energy”, then this extra energy can be transmitted through to your head, which means a greater chance of serious injury. To do its job then, a helmet should stay firmly in place on your head in an impact. To stay firmly in place a helmet needs to:

>Fit well
>Have the straps correctly adjusted to minimize movement

The four golden rules of a good fit

1. The front edge of your helmet should sit 1 to 2 cms above the eyebrows. Most head injuries involve impacts to the forehead and temple region. Wearing your helmet as suggested should help ensure these areas are covered.

2. Rear straps should be securely fastened and sit on or just below the earlobe. The chin strap goes under the jaw.

What is EN 1384 and what does it mean?

Saddleries and Riders ask us all the time about equestrian helmets and the standards that they claim to meet. So what does a helmet claiming to be approved to be AS/NZS 3838 or EN 1384 really mean?

We think this can be best illustrated by some recent independent tests on a two CE EN 1384 helmets (currently on sale in Australia). Our understanding is that both helmets may have failed the requirements of CE EN 1384, despite the helmets claiming that they did conform to CE EN 1384.

You may well ask “How could this happen?” and “What can be done about it?”

What can be done about it?

It is of course possible for any manufacturer to have a quality problem from time to time, and this is why there should be on-going testing and auditing of safety equipment. But the further problem with EN 1384 is that no organisation has direct responsibility of assuring conformance to EN 1384. In other words, Standards Australia (now called SAI Global) supervises AS/NZS 3838, but there is no equivalent body for EN 1384. Some manufacturers of EN 1384 recognise these many shortcomings of EN 1384, and voluntarily submit themselves to an independent Certification scheme.