It is every rider’s worst nightmare. You are out riding, loving life, and then a crash causes serious spinal injury leading to paralysis or worse. Whilst a neck brace can’t protect your lower back, it can massively reduce the risk of injuring your neck and along with it, full neck-down paralysis. It seems strange then that so few people wear neck braces.
Despite riding since the 90’s I have never owned or worn a neck brace. Mostly this is because in my mind they are for downhillers and I have never owned a DH bike or really raced DH properly. After reading a study on the effectiveness of neck braces conducted by a US-based private ambulance company who work at motocross events I decided that needed to change. There is a link to read the study in full below.
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From Wide Open MTB
Wide Open Mag is a group of friends producing a magazine, united by our love of mountain biking. We started as a PDF magazine, printed for a year and now we are focused on our website.
