SBX is designed to supplement existing rescue equipment: beacons, shovels, probes. The extra time SBX can give you under the snow is worth nothing if you don't have a beacon to be located with and if your party does not have a shovel and probe to rescue you. SBX should never be used without standard rescue equipment.

SBX is designed to help victims who can breathe under the snow — meaning that their airways must be at least partially open during burial. Victims whose airways are fully blocked cannot benefit from SBX's air supply. 9 out of 10 avalanche burial victims survive to 15 minutes (Proctor, Strappazon, Brugger, et.al., 2016). In situations where the human body no longer can breathe in any additional oxygen, suffocation will take place over the course of 5-12 minutes. With that knowledge, our interpretation of this data is that roughly 10% of buried victims have no ability to breathe under the snow.

Avalanches generate powerful forces which can inflict a high degree of trauma if users are not careful of terrain traps which may be present. Roughly 25% of avalanche deaths are due to trauma. SBX will not be able to protect the wearer from the trauma of being caught in an avalanche.

Based on these two factors, we estimate that 10% of burial victims will not be able to breathe under the snow, and 25% will die of trauma. As such we estimate that 65% of those caught in avalanches will benefit from SBX. Victims in tree well and deep snow accidents will also benefit from the system, so long as they are able to activate the SBX after falling into the tree well itself.