Pony Club Incident Reports

By Sarah Andres

The United States Pony Clubs is considered a leading organization in equestrian safety. USPC was the first national organization to require wearing helmets with chinstraps in all mounted activities back in 1983, and USPC assisted in development of the ASTM equestrian helmet standard F1163 in 1988. In order to track equestrian injuries occurring during its activities, USPC began asking volunteers to complete a questionnaire on competition accidents back in 1980. Currently, USPC requires club, center and regional leaders to complete an Incident Report form, found under the Safety Tab on the website, when ANY incident occurs at a Pony Club activity. This form should be completed whether the incident appears to be only a minor bump or a significant injury that requires a trip to the hospital. Many clubs/centers/regions fill out the form when someone is seriously hurt, but minor and non-injury incidents are also helpful to know about.

USPC requires completion of Incident Report forms for both members and non-members at all official USPC activities. In addition to a rider falling from a horse, reports should be completed for unmounted incidents as well. In order to gather as much information about an incident as we can and from different perspectives, multiple people who witnessed the incident can assist in the filing of a single report. Information requested on the forms includes age, gender, certification level of member, type of activity, description of incident, description of injuries, what protective equipment was being worn and other possible contributing factors.

Submitted Incident Reports are reviewed by the USPC National Office and the Safety Committee to look for trends and patterns of incidents and identify ways to reduce the risk of injury. Filing a report also allows for additional follow–up with club/center leadership and members, including providing USPC Return to Play guidelines for relevant injuries. Filing a report will not cause insurance rates to increase. In fact, the more we show our commitment to safety by tracking, understanding, learning, and teaching from the information we gather, the greater the potential to reduce our rates!

Each year, the USPC Safety Committee provides a summary of incidents to the Board of Governors with a comparison to previous years. These summaries allow for observation of safety-related trends and even guides development of national policies, such as Policy # 0810 Safety Requirements for Helmets and Policy # 0830 Safety Requirements for Body Protection Vests.

In addition to internal USPC use, data collected from Incident Reports have been analyzed and reported in peer-reviewed scientific literature. In 1983, Bernhang and Winslett (1) reported that 24.5% of the reported injuries obtained in USPC competitions were to the head of the rider. This and the data obtained from the American Horse Shows Association suggested that helmets be made mandatory when mounted for riders under 18. Dr. Bixby-Hammett (2) evaluated USPC safety data obtained from 1982-1990, which reported location and types of injuries, and described the role of the pediatrician in consulting with equestrian families for prevention of head injuries. More recently, Andres and others (3) analyzed USPC Incident Reports from 2011-2017 to see if wearing body protection vests was correlated with lower levels of injury. The results of this study were instrumental in developing the requirement to wear vests when jumping cross country-type fences in USPC activities.

In summary, the USPC Safety Committee studies the data collected from Incident Reports and allows Pony Club to recognize potential causes of accidents unique to horse activities. The data also suggests possible actions that could be taken to prevent or reduce these risks. This is integral to promote best practices in riding, working with horses, and educating those involved with all Pony Club activities in the methods of injury avoidance.

1.Bernhang AM, Winslett G. Equestrian Injuries. Phys Sportsmed 11(1):90-7, 1983. 2. Bixby-Hammett DM. Pediatric equestrian injuries. Pediatrics 89(6 Pt 2):1173-6, 1992. 3. Andres SA, Bushau-Sprinkle AM, Brier ME, Seger YR. Effects of body protection vests and experience levels in prevention of equestrian injuries. BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med 4(1):e000426, 2018.