The importance of wearing safety equipment

[the_power]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... ing45.html

"A man died during a jousting re-enactment in Britain because of failures to ensure a correct helmet was worn and failures to ensure his shield was appropriately assembled, a coroner ruled today."

[brendan]

Head and Hand Protection as a minimum is listed in the safety guidelines that were agreed all those years ago and subsequently ignored by most participants in the hobby in this country.

There are cases where no head protection is necessary i.e. Tightly choreographed fight displays. Otherwise it is remiss to not insist on it. Even if it is inconvenient.

[wiblick]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... joust.html

more extensive coverage here.

[Dave Mooney]

There is more to this story than just safety gear and that's lack of training and safety enforcement. It claims he's never jousted before. Who let him up on the horse then?

Both training and safety enforcement are issues, covered in the safety guidelines, that are also ignored by many.

[the_power]

Dave, seems it was just the guy's first time - he'd tilted against quatrains etc. previously.

You don't do jousting because its safe though - the first few times are the scary ones. You take a risk, and mitigate it with good equipment & training..

John

[sabrewolfe]

I remember hearing about that accident when it happened, it was tragic and could have been avoided. Fortunately for the most part we do not tend to see Jousting at Irish Events (well none that im aware of, im open to correction on that) but in general our level of safety can be a bit ad hoc when it comes to events. Yes the guidelines pack clearly spell out what should be considered a minimum amount of safety equipment.

"1.1 All combatants and field flag bearers should wear battle worthy head, hand and arm protection"

But how often do people not quite follow through on this, how many people have seen silly needless injuries where people decide not to wear a helmet when warming up or practising before putting on a set piece? How many people have been to gigs where helmets are "strongly recomended" rather than absolutely required. How many people forget their gloves sometimes and decide to fight without them?

We can all be a bit lax when it comes to safety and its only after we get a fright that we realise that we are being careless with safety, id imagine that most groups if they were totally honest do not have a designated first aider / currently certified first aider and a decent stocked first aid kit.

Even in situations where people have been extremely safe and wearing all the appropriate equipment there have been a few accidents that had the potential for serious injuries but had a good outcome purely because their safety equipment protected them. If in these accidents people had not been wearing their safety equipment then there could have easily been a much different outcome.

Long story short, dont go splashing out on your first sword when you only have a leather helmet, invest in safety equipment as it pays for itself by turning what could be a break into a bruise and a dented helmet or gauntlet

[brendan]

A personal note on this: I was involved in some sparring last year and due to me and the guy I was fighting being a bit reckless and going on past the point where we should have stopped a wild shot went in.
The shot deflected off my breast plate and other than the fact of me pulling a matrix move and wearing a bevor I would now be missing an eye.
So yeah, wear head and hand protection.

Brendan

[the_power]

Shame that gigs like the Battle of the Flags still make protection optional.

[sabrewolfe]

Well when it comes to flags I agree with you John but as it happens I will not be a combatant this year, I've been unable to train for a long time so I decided it would be unsafe for me to field. Because of this im going there and have volunteered myself in the capacity of medical officer for the gig.

I fully intend on bringing down all the helms I have so people who do not have a helmet can borrow one. This is not an ideal situation as people should not have to rely on borrowing anothers safety equipment, however given the fact that head protection is optional its the best option open to me as id rather not spend the day steri stripping head wounds closed or dealing with a concussion should someone receive an accidential knock to the head.

@ Brendan,
yeah that incident sprang to mind but Iwas not going to mention it specifically, but its exactly like you said safety equipment stopped that being much worse than it could have been, not to mention your matrix move, who would have thought a clanky could move so quickly.

Is there anything we can actually do moving forward to ensure that people wear safety equipment? Id love if we could make re-enactment safer but as to how to go about it ....?

[Ethereal Dreamer]

I actually almost lost my eye on Sunday, and I can definitely say that if it hadn't been for the fact that I have a speckled Viking helm it could have been a lot worse. Still trying to actually figure out what happened there.

Here's another one, I got a bad shot to the back a few months ago and if it hadn't been for my maille, I'd have been landed in hospital for sure. As it was, I just got winded badly.

Safety gear is good. Not to mention all the times I've almost broken fingers (yeah....so I didn't pick up blocking right away....)