Riding helmets and safety standards: a history.

This page is history: what each body and standard said, and when. Which helmets a competition accepts today is decided by the body's current rules, the hat tag where one is used, and the officials at the event. The present rules are on helmet rules by body and helmet rules and history, and the standards themselves on helmet standards.

The United States: how ASTM F1163 came about

The fullest account in our research is by Drusilla Malavase, a past chair of the ASTM committee on equestrian protective headgear and of the US Pony Club's safety committee, published on the US Pony Club blog on 21 September 2023. Her chronology:

1970s

After reports of rising numbers of serious head injuries, the US Pony Clubs board, under president Rufus Wesson, set up a task group to find better riding helmets.

1978

A photograph of an Advanced-level event rider in an unsecured show hat being hit by a falling rail led Clarke Cassidy, a board member of the US Combined Training Association (now the US Eventing Association), to call for action.

January 1979

The Pony Club and the USCTA brought together sport leaders and manufacturers. The US Polo Association offered its newly finished helmet standard, and NOCSAE's football helmet standard and the Snell Foundation's laboratory were also offered.

Early 1980s

A laboratory in western New York tested prototype helmets and published a list of those that passed. Several governing bodies required listed helmets, which was controversial.

August 1984 to 1988

The first ASTM meeting on an equestrian helmet standard was held in August 1984. After six drafts, the standard F1163-88 was completed in 1988, with certification through the Safety Equipment Institute (SEI). The general helmet test standard F1446 was developed afterwards.

January 1990

The Chronicle of the Horse printed readers' complaints about the new helmets' bulk, weight, fit, cost, harnesses and availability, the start of what Malavase calls "the riding helmet wars", which ran into the 2000s.

2015 to 2023

SEI listed 18 certified equestrian helmet makers in May 2015 and 21 in June 2023. Makers began adding the MIPS rotational system to riding helmets around 2021 to 2023; that is the makers' claim as the author reports it.

February 2023

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of a riding helmet model that had not passed SEI certification. No injuries were reported. Recalls are covered on the recalls page.

Britain and Europe

The older British standards

A guide to riding hats from BETA, the British equestrian trade body, seen only as a search summary, lists BS 3686, BS 6473:1984 and BS 4472:1988 as the British standards that came before the first European standard, all withdrawn in 1997, and describes the European standard EN 1384 as a major step forward because it protected the lower edge of the head for the first time. We could not read the guide itself, so these details are unconfirmed.

The 2014 withdrawal of EN 1384

The European standard then failed. Commission Implementing Decision 2014/714/EU records that EN 1384:1996 lost its legal standing (its "presumption of conformity") on 30 April 2013, when the 2012 edition replaced it, and that on 13 October 2014 the Commission withdrew EN 1384:2012 from the Official Journal. The Commission listed shortcomings in shock absorption, shell penetration, side stability, temple protection, field of vision and stability on the head, and cited the British PAS 015 and Snell standards as offering a higher level of safety.

A UK farm-safety notice from the NFU in December 2014 says European test houses then wrote an interim specification, known as VG1, so that CE certification could continue. EquNews reported in December 2014 that British bodies would allow hats made only to (BS) EN 1384 through 2015 but not after, and that BETA said riders not competing did not need to change their hats. The bodies differ in one report: a search summary of Horse and Hound says British Dressage would still allow EN 1384 hats in 2016, unlike the others. We could not read that article.

Older standards retired, newer ones arrive

• PAS 015:1998 and Snell E2001 were dropped by British Showjumping at the start of 2022 and by British Eventing, British Riding Clubs, The Pony Club and Riding for the Disabled from 1 January 2023 (Equestrian Trade News, 21 December 2022). A footnote on BETA's January 2023 chart says Endurance GB and British Horseball would stop accepting them from 1 January 2024.
• PAS 015:2011 was published by BSI on 1 July 2011. BSI now lists it as withdrawn on 3 January 2025, yet the FEI and UK bodies still accept it for 2026.
• Snell E2021 was approved by the Snell board in July 2021, when testing to it began and testing to E2016 ended (Snell newsletter, November 2021).
• EN 1384:2023 was announced by CEN on 18 December 2023 as the first harmonised equestrian helmet standard in nine years. CEN says it adds tests against a hazard anvil and raises the requirements for shock absorption and mechanical strength.

The FEI helmet rule

2011 to 2013

An FEI release republished by Around the Rings says the General Assembly adopted the helmet rule unanimously in 2011, and that it took effect on 1 January 2013, requiring properly fastened protective headgear while riding anywhere on FEI showgrounds. Dressage-News (2 October 2012) reported that the start had been put back a year at US Equestrian's request. Under the 2013 rule, dressage riders aged 18 and over on horses of seven and over could still wear a top hat or bowler in competition and the warm-up just before it, and refusing an official's request to wear headgear brought a yellow warning card, with two yellow cards meaning an automatic two-month suspension.

2019 to 2021

The FEI General Assembly in Moscow in November 2019 adopted a rule requiring approved headgear for anyone mounted at any time on any FEI showground from 1 January 2021, ending the dressage top-hat option. Equestrian Trade News reported that a January 2020 start had been delayed a year so makers could develop helmets suited to dressage dress, and that the rule does not cover vaulting, which is not treated as riding.

2025 to 2028

The FEI's list of accepted helmet standards, last updated in 2019, was replaced by a list published on 1 July 2025 and in force from 1 January 2026, which phases in a requirement for helmets to meet at least two of four named standards from 1 January 2028. From 2026 a breach of the headgear rule, General Regulations Article 140.1, brings a fine instead of a yellow card (HQ Magazine, 5 February 2026). We read the FEI list through a copy hosted by an Australian campdraft body, because the FEI's own site refused our requests.

National federations

• Equestrian Canada (then Equine Canada) required approved helmets for all riders at its sanctioned national dressage competitions from 1 January 2012, which it called a first for a national federation (Chronicle of the Horse).
• US Equestrian added Snell certification alongside ASTM in rule change 030-22, approved on 20 June 2023. US Eventing reported on 26 July 2023 that the Board brought the effective date forward from 1 December to 1 August 2023.
• Equestrian Australia made helmet tags compulsory for eventing from 1 January 2020, jumping from 1 January 2022, and dressage, driving and endurance from 1 July 2022.
• British Riding Clubs, British Eventing and The Pony Club use a single pink hat tag from 2026, each carrying the tagging body's logo and each accepted at all three (BRC Hat Rules 2026).

Falls that became part of the story

Some injuries to well-known riders are part of the published history of helmet campaigns. They are recorded here as history.

• Courtney King-Dye, March 2010. The US Pony Club author records that the US Olympic dressage rider fractured her skull and suffered a traumatic brain injury when a horse she was schooling tripped and fell. She was not wearing a helmet and was in a coma for about four weeks. A search summary of Horse Nation says her accident prompted the Riders4Helmets campaign, which held the first International Helmet Awareness Day on 12 July 2010; we could not read that page.
• Christopher Reeve, 27 May 1995. The Reeve Foundation's blog, republishing El Pais in May 2020, records that the actor was paralysed from the neck down after a fall from his horse at a competition in Culpeper, Virginia. Most sources name the horse Buck; a TV Insider piece, seen only as a search summary, names it Eastern Express.

The separate history of safety in eventing, from the deaths of 1999 to frangible fences, is on eventing safety history. To see which standards a body lists, the helmet standards checker summarises the published lists.