Thanks for linking to that article. A comment about it though, they don't mention how many people typically wear neck braces for the activities in their region. I don't know enough about MX, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out more people don't wear a brace than do. As such there's a chance the ratio of 239:26 is just because about 1/10 of people actually wear a neck brace.
I think the chart in section 5 is pretty supportive of the idea that neck braces help make the crashes less severe, along with the chart in section 6 that shows 3.5% of accidents were critical with a neck brace compared with 20% without. Additionally, given the total number of accidents being within shouting distance of each other, it further suggests that the neck brace is solidly a good idea to keep your neck safe (barring some weird: people with neck braces crash more often thing).
I'm not trying to throw shade on the Great Lakes EMS study or the article you linked, nor am I trying to pooh pooh the idea that neck braces are good/helpful (I think they are), I just wanted to make sure it was known that the study wasn't a complete slam dunk for braces. Having said that, it's possible that in MX neck brace usage is the opposite of in park/DH/Enduro and more people wear braces than don't (cross isn't my scene so I'm completely ignorant there) and if so that's even more supportive of the premise.
June 9, 2022, 4:30 p.m. - shenzhe
Thanks for linking to that article. A comment about it though, they don't mention how many people typically wear neck braces for the activities in their region. I don't know enough about MX, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out more people don't wear a brace than do. As such there's a chance the ratio of 239:26 is just because about 1/10 of people actually wear a neck brace. I think the chart in section 5 is pretty supportive of the idea that neck braces help make the crashes less severe, along with the chart in section 6 that shows 3.5% of accidents were critical with a neck brace compared with 20% without. Additionally, given the total number of accidents being within shouting distance of each other, it further suggests that the neck brace is solidly a good idea to keep your neck safe (barring some weird: people with neck braces crash more often thing). I'm not trying to throw shade on the Great Lakes EMS study or the article you linked, nor am I trying to pooh pooh the idea that neck braces are good/helpful (I think they are), I just wanted to make sure it was known that the study wasn't a complete slam dunk for braces. Having said that, it's possible that in MX neck brace usage is the opposite of in park/DH/Enduro and more people wear braces than don't (cross isn't my scene so I'm completely ignorant there) and if so that's even more supportive of the premise.