by Karen1. My horse spooked when a loose horse (travelling with us, had dropped back to graze) ran up from behind, I ate the trail at full gallop and whacked the side of my helmeted head on the ground quite hard. Had lots of scrapes on my face and a black eye but intact skull! We were ten miles from the trailer in a wilderness area.
2. My unhelmeted best friend had to unload a new horse in the middle of the night by herself, and was at the horse's head in the slant load trailer to back her out. When the mare stepped back & down out of the trailer in the pitch black she panicked, not knowing where the ground was, and jumped back in. When my friend "woke up", she had goose-eggs all over her head where she had been slammed into the partition, loosened teeth, and a concussion. She had to crawl to the house to phone for help, stopping many times along the way to pass out or throw up from the concussion. She now wears a helmet every time she works around horses at all.
3. Same friend but wearing a helmet this time, riding a green colt. A dog ran out of a yard and between the colt's legs, the colt went ballistic, friend got bucked off backwards and the back of her head connected with a fencepost on the way down.
4. Another bucking episode on a different colt, her head hit the gravel road so hard she had pieces of gravel embedded in the helmet.