What injuries does a vest not protect from?
It's actually a great question that we get a lot. Both air vests and body protectors have quite different capabilities and limitations. We'll frequently work with people that want to know what they can do to protect their collarbone and their tailbone.
While tailbone and collarbone injuries are not uncommon, those actually aren't typically injuries typically that air vests or body protectors can protect against. For collarbone protection, you actually need a shoulder protector added on to a body protector to be able to try and prevent a collarbone injury. Collarbone fractures usually come from falls on the shoulder cap and it only takes seven pounds of pressure to snap your collarbone.
For tailbone injuries, air vests and body protectors generally come down to the the SI joint, so vests aren't really coming up underneath your bottom. If you have an axial loading type injury where you're just falling like a rock on your butt, you're going to hurt your butt. There is nothing that an air vest or a body protector can do to prevent injuries from axial loading type falls. Same thing if you fall on your head and get lawn darted - a vest isn't really going to help you that much with that type of fall either.
It's very important to know what vests can do, but also to know what they can't do.
