Originally Posted By: ireckon
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 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.