I wore a neck lanyard with critical edc (whistle, light, knife) for years, but ditched it for a pocket lanyard.

For centuries, the natural materials from which neck lanyards were fashioned often would break of their own accord before posing a safety problem. Modern synthetics like nylon are a different matter.

A lot depends on your activity - rock climbers should be more cautious about hanging things around their neck than say, hikers walking on a prepared trail.

Neck strangulation doesn't reach epidemic proportions, but it is a potential problem that can be easily avoided. Who was the Hollywood celebrity who was strangled by her own neck scarf many years ago?

And really, just because it's mostly ok and hardly anyone dies (that we hear about), doesn't mean it's not a good idea to apply one's thinking and forethought to prevent a problem in the future.

Work hands out lots of neck lanyards for various reasons. The ONLY ones I'll wear have a designed-in breakaway mechanism. There's no need to take any risk because of a lanyard.

With a breakaway lanyard, I'm afraid of it breaking away without my permission. While there's the off chance of the lanyard around my neck strangling me, there's a 26 times higher chance (fake stat) of the lanyard breaking away without my permission. As a result, I lose my signaling devices and other important gear. So, instead of dying from strangulation, I die from being unable to signal or being unable to start a fire. Are my concerns legit?

I would personally attach the lanyard to my daypack or backpack and not have anything else on my neck. But that's just me. It would conflict with my other stuff, especially the chest strap.

I use a shoulder strap clip for my GPSr and a separate clip for the hydration tube, then a lanyard for my whistle tucked into the pack lid. I don't use my compass [20 yr old Suunto MCA] as much any more except as a backup (yeah yeah, chastise me later! )

You could use paracord without the inner strands to tie the compass to a belt loop or pack strap or as a lanyard around your neck. Paracord without the strands is pretty stretchy but still way stronger than you ever need for this purpose and would give a little if you ever snagged it on a tree branch thus preventing stangulation. The alternate is to use elastic cord as a lanyard. That might keep it from tangling up with the rest of your gear. The problem is, I don't know if the lanyard hole on most compasses is large enough to put paracord or elastic cord through it, only way to know is to actually try it.

There's nothing quite like having your neck lanyard getting caught in a shredding machine to get the adrenalin juices flowing is there?

I take a somewhat pragmatic approach to this. I always tuck my shirt into my pants. I keep my lanyard inside my shirt at all times and it only comes out when reading the compass or whatever, otherwise it goes back into the shirt. I also have a lanyard that I cut and then stitched back together with thread and the breaking strength is around 50 lbs. If it breaks, the items will fall into my shirt and won't be lost. While backpacking, I carry a spare of everything that is on my necklace so a stealth loss of the necklace would not be catastrophic.

If you going to wear a lanyard, it needs to breakaway. Just look at all the people who lose fingers because they are wearing rings. That alone should be enough incentive to have a breakaway.

As for the lanyards getting caught in office machines, the same danger exists for men's ties and long hair but I don't hear anyone advocating that we ban either of those things.

a dancer, isadora duncan, died 1927 when her scarf became wrapped around the spokes and axle of a sports car.

not hollywood, but ....?

I worry about this during hunting season where I am climbing up into deerstands, or scrambling up steep slopes sometimes with wet or icy boots. I always have an oversized 27" bandana around my neck in the fall and winter, and I tie an overhand knot around the opposite corner of it so it will slip off if I fall. I have also tried various leather slides to hold it on, but they tend to escape into the woods when I'm not paying attention. I switched my EDC to a paracord pocket lanyard, but I would have no problem with a light leather lanyard around my neck. It would certainly break under my weight.

We have, and use, a DoD approved shredder and it's quite a fierce machine. Chewing thru the badges before it got hold of the lanyard would injure it pretty badly but I wouldn't want to engage in a tug-of-war with it using the back of my neck as my side of the war.

And all knives of any size, even 1" SAK, are forbidden in the workplace so there would be no (legal)self-rescue.

There oughta be a Dilbert strip about this.......