I am surprised regular skaters do not wear pads. I've seen a figure skater drop onto his backside, and although he got up quickly, he stood still for quite a while, and I'm sure he was in a fair bit of pain. 
I've known figure skaters to wear padded shorts when practising some of the more difficult jumps but I was always told that by doing that you run the risk of relying on your padding and being too afraid to actually attempt the jumps properly without it.
Figure skating blades are longer at the back to facilitate the landings of jumps but specialised ice dance blades are actually shorter to make close footwork less fraught with danger. I why I'm living in fear of toppling backwards as I try to remember how to skate because I have dance blades but I hope I'll get my balance back soon. It's probably down to doggedly refusing to switch to Dance from Phantom Specials until I absolutely had to. I always was stubborn...
I fractured my pelvis a couple of times and wrote off my entire career from backwards crossovers, wrecking a couple of ligaments and knocking the kneecap out of alignment. Still no idea how that crash happened. I know I was motoring but...?! When you know you're about to do something death defying, you've already resigned yourself to the possibility of a crash and are ready for it. It's the sudden, totally unexpected falls that do the real damage.
