Safety Committee Proposes Use of Shockbox

A Shockbox mounted to a riding helmet.

Sarah Broussard kicked off the Safety Committee Open Forum with the happy announcement that her first year on the job as committee chair has been a relatively easy one due to this year being a success from a safety standpoint. With that in mind, the Safety Committee is looking to implement additional programs and procedures to safeguard our riders, starting with the Shockbox.

Designed for use in football — which has a 75 percent concussion rate — the Shockbox is a helmet sensor that provides real-time assessment of head impact levels. The Shockbox helmet sensors attaches to helmets using high-bonding 3M adhesive tape. In the case of a fall, the Shockbox sends an immediate impact notification to your phone via a free app that works with iOS, Android and Blackberry. Thanks to long-range Bluetooth technology, the Shockbox can transmit data on an impact from up to 328 feet away.

When the Shockbox experiences a significant impact, it sends the data to the app, which uses mathematical analysis algorithms to calculate the impact magnitude and direction and correlate that to brain injury. The app shows how the impact magnitude fares on a sliding scale, with green meaning the impact was not serious and a hospital trip isn’t necessary, yellow meaning medium impact and seeing a doctor is recommended, and orange meaning serious impact and seeing a doctor is necessary.

Concussions have been a hot topic so far at the Annual Convention, with many of the High Performance riders taking the Impact Test here this weekend to have a baseline should they ever suffer a concussion, so the discussion of introducing the Shockbox to eventing is definitely timely. What do you think of the Shockbox, EN? Is this technology we should consider using at events?

[The Shockbox]

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