Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but Premium users receive great benefits. Premium benefits include:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
We are already aware of how some Thoracic injuries can happen involving a brace - this is another reason why we have a flexible design, and 30mm of chest suspension... but they are still possible without a brace. Again, this is where the massive effort on potential secondary injuries came into play, and we already had solutions in place for these types of things back in 2011 (other companies still do not solve this). Anything you guys are asking for, we are 1000 steps ahead of already. We live this every day, and have poured all our resources and brain power into solving these problems for many many years.
Patient data is protected by law, so you will not hear from them, nor can you talk to them. You guys have to understand the value in this type of data is to zoom OUT and view from 10,000 feet, not to drill down infinitely to micro details. This way, you are able to get an accurate picture of neck brace effectiveness over a long time, with ALL the variables considered, and see if it is a net positive after all things are considered... turns out (according to this data), it is drastically better to be wearing a neck brace in all different situations. It is not possible to drill down to the levels you are asking for real world accidents, too many variables... BUT....
The opposite is true for Lab data - that is where it is very important to drill down, isolate as many variables as possible to create a controlled, repeatable environment with accurate results. Which we do! This level of control is not possible at the track on a Sunday.
These results are not fear based, they are factual unbiased data recordings from a team of people who have nothing to gain from their results (other than hopefully making their job easier on Sunday). The only way real world data can be better than this study, is if there is more of it from other parts of the world. 10 years and 10,000 people from our little sport is an incredible amount of data.
You cannot do a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study to look at smoking risk, for example. Or to test an HIV vaccine. Or to look at the effectiveness of seat belts. Instead, you look at outcomes (e.g., death) and ask whether the proposed intervention reduced the undesirable outcome.
You'd rightly go to jail for putting people in a car with a placebo seat belt and running them into a wall at a controlled speed. Or, purposely trying to infect someone with HIV.
I love my Atlas brace and wouldn't ride without it.
But isn't it important to know how many people in the study are actually using the proposed intervention (neck braces)? We can infer about a 45% rate of neck braces based on the sample of treated patients. But there are many variables that could lead to a different rate in the general sample.
The injury rate data is overwhelming enough that it seems clear that neck braces can be helpful. But the actual magnitude of that help is unknown.
And the other problem for me is that this data shows that "neck braces" are helpful, but there have been many different neck brace designs over the past decade. Are they all equally helpful? How would I know which design to buy?
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
But is it? The arguments that people have made is that neck braces can sometimes cause other injuries. And certain designs may be more prone to do that than others.
While I do wish the data could have been included they said that it was not at a point that it was ready for publication
You want a concussion or your head crushed?
If you’re like 99% of the population, you’ve taken some sort of prescription medication in your life. EVERY single drug has some possible side effect(s). Transferring your thinking over to that, you would have never taken a single medication in your life, and never will, because of the possibility of a side effect. It’s all about the benefit to risk ratio, and wearing a neck brace is pretty much a slam dunk.
I think a lot of you are just trying to justify your reason for not wearing one, and throwing out reasons that just don’t hold water. If you don’t want to wear one, don’t. Don’t wear a helmet, boots, or knee braces either. None of those have been control group/double-blind studied either. Helmets are studied just like Atlas is doing with braces - with analytical lab tests and real world data acquisition like done in the study here. Both show that helmets save lives. You can chose to ignore the tests and studies if you want, but saying the studies are worthless because they’re not control:double-blind is untrue
Of course I'm better off with 20 broken collarbones than one cervical spine injury. But I'm also worse off with 10 broken collarbones than zero broken collarbones.
If you weren’t, but are now convinced by this study then go buy one.
If you’re not convinced and seek to pick holes in the data in order to support your own belief that they’re ineffective then carry on not wearing one. I genuinely hope that you never regret your decision.
I have one of these just sitting in my gear bag. In fact I've bought 3 over the years and never wore any of them more than a handful of times.
I won't be riding again without a neck brace ever again.
Thanks for this.
Even when normalized for the differences in the population size I'm getting no where NEAR the percents they are getting. Much larger percents in all but 1 case.
1 death with neckbrace, 4 deaths without. Even after correcting for the sample sizes the the risk of death when not wearing a brace is 322% higher than wearing a brace (admittedly that one is to small of a sample size. Where are they getting 69% from?
Pit Row
Best Regards for the holiday season and safe and enjoyable riding all. – Leatt Lab
WTH are you people trying to look at? The back or your jerseys? Or maybe you have a short neck or I have a long one?
It would be nearly impossible to prove or disprove the effectiveness of these braces...they are like religion. You either believe in them or you do not.
FWIW, I am an emergency physician and I am atheist/agnostic.
I would love to see some demographics along with the rest of the data. Seems more as if people who wear neck braces are more risk averse in general and don’t wreck big like those without. Good on them for collecting all this data though. The likeliness of death should have been left out, far too few (thankfully) to have any meaning in regards to kneckbrace yes/no.
If the Atlas commercial on Pulp wasnt so fu#%ing cringe, I might even try one.
Post a reply to: 10 Year Neck Brace Study Results