Horse riding

Is horse riding safe?

It is a sport where the risk of death is small and the risk of injury is not. On the most widely quoted estimate, from David Spiegelhalter and Michael Blastland's book The Norm Chronicles, one ride on a horse carries about half a micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary, less than a day of ordinary life. But horses throw, kick and fall on riders often enough that injuries are a normal part of the sport.

Unlike skiing or marathons, riding has no good international count of rides or hours. So the half-micromort figure is an estimate, and we rate our confidence as low.

Falls and the head

The main way riders die is by falling and hitting their head. A US review of medical examiner records in 27 states found 205 riding deaths from 1976 to 1987, and more than 60% involved head injuries. Riders are typically 2 to 3 metres above the ground, often moving at speed, and a horse can stop or swerve faster than a rider can react.

The horse itself is the other hazard. A frightened horse can kick, crush a handler against a wall or fall onto a rider. Injury studies usually count people hurt while handling horses on the ground as well as riders.

What the Swedish data show

The best recent study comes from Sweden. Meredith and colleagues looked at hospital records from 1997 to 2014 and found 29,850 injured cases and 51 deaths.

	Injured	Died
Share female	About 90%	About 70%
Average age	26.8 years	43 years

Head injuries were the most common injury location in both groups, and fractures the most common type. The striking finding was who died. Each extra year of age raised the odds that an injury would be fatal by 5.1%, and men had 2.2 times the odds of women. Riding is a mostly female sport, but older men who ride run a markedly higher risk when things go wrong.

Competition riding

Eventing, with its cross-country fences, is the riskiest form of the sport. In a 1999 study of riders at equestrian events, Paix found injury rates especially high among event riders, and highest among those competing at the top levels, with frequent falls and some deaths. Rotational falls, where the horse somersaults over a fixed fence and lands on the rider, are the most feared. Frangible fences, which collapse when hit hard, were introduced to reduce them.

How a ride compares

Half a micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per ride puts horse riding in the same range as a day of skiing (about 0.6 to 0.8 micromorts at US resorts) or a 20-mile bike ride in Britain (about 0.5). A rider who goes out four times a week adds about 100 micromorts a year, roughly double what a daily 5-mile cycle commute adds. The difference is injury: a fall from a horse is a fall from height, onto ground the rider did not choose, sometimes with the horse following.

How to ride more safely

1. Wear a helmet every time you ride, certified to a current standard such as PAS 015, VG1, ASTM F1163 or EN 1384, and replace it after any hard fall.
2. Wear a body protector for jumping and cross-country riding. For eventing, consider an air jacket as well.
3. Use safety stirrups or boots with a heel so a foot cannot slide through the stirrup and leave you dragged.
4. Ride a horse that matches your skill. Many serious accidents involve an inexperienced rider on a young or excitable horse.
5. Handle horses with care on the ground. Stand to the side, not behind, and never tie a horse to something it can pull loose.
6. Tell someone your route when riding out alone, and carry a phone on your body, not on the saddle.
7. Be cautious on roads. Wear high-visibility clothing for horse and rider, and avoid riding in poor light.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (86) is low per ride, though the figure is an estimate. Injury risk (45) is the weakest factor, and controllability (50) reflects that half a tonne of animal can act on its own. Help is usually nearby (74). Compare motorcycling, with similar injury patterns, and skiing, where falls also cause most harm.