It is 100% true there have been injuries to collar bones, shoulders and even breaking the c6-c7 vertabres for how the Leatt sits on your spine. There is not enough testing to prove whether it is a good design or if it is more effective then a neck donut. NO ONE can you tell anything true about the braces, it is all opinion and there are many experts that think the shoulders should take the weight, or the leatt is too rigid, or the EVS is too cheap, the neck should be open as the chest is the natural limiter, the fact is no one knows. Many pros have stopped wearing them, some openly say it is because they dont believe in the them, others I think have more to do with no one paying them to wear them.
My opinion is the neck braces are designed for specific types of falls on the head, the leatt in specific is meant to protect from landing on the top of your head and compressing your spine. Aaron Hill here a local pro was wearing his Leatt, fell in a corner, paralyzed from the chest down, so clearly brace or no brace hes done. There is also another opinion that says the most common types of crashes involve sliding, in which case a brace around your neck is a danger as it could get hung up or snug on something and put enough force on your head to stop it before the body allowing the brain to slam forward severing the brain stem from the spine, neck down paralyzed. This is why Arai helmets look goofy are all smooth and use plastics that break away very easily. That cheap EVS you put up, I believe in, it allows flex, the front is open, however it is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever tried to wear, I may try the Omega one next, but that new cheap EVS white thing looks promising to me. I want nothing touching my spine but for you it is your choice, its your neck to protect. Just because something costs 600 bucks and everyone that has one swears by them it does not mean its worth what it is, or will protect you. At this point with the information something is better than nothing but there is nothing, nadda, one ioda that proves if one brace is better than the other or if any are effective.