Post by Wyldcomfort on Apr 19, 2007 6:38:50 GMT -5
Hello everyone, It has been a quiet few days around here but nothing like another article on "ATVs are bad" and nothing about the lack of supervision causing any troubles. They are once again after the CPSC, who by the way has been working very hard on getting it right. This is Sue Rabe's group and the same folks who have been wrecking havoc in other states and on the National level. What surprises me is Sue wasn't a spokesperson this time. It was another mother from her group who has spoken with Sue in the past. I am enclosing the article, the contact person's email and will send any information on. This is a national fight and we can't forget that. I also want to point out the mention of Motorcycles in this article because they too are on the list. So everybody - how bout a letter to the author. When will they ask the hard question - why do they keep letting the parents off the hook but are so willing to hang our sport out to dry. I say fight back at every opportunity we get. Remember to take the high road with your letter - well written based on fact rather than drama. Let them know we are watching and we don't like what we are seeing. They have a responsibility to get it right and present facts rather than fiction.
On another note, it looks like SB101 will have a work session on Monday. Anyone is welcome and I plan on attending to show my support for it....It isn't a hearing so you needn't feel that you have to go. Save your time-off work for if and when it hits the floor!! I promise to fill everyone in on Monday when I return. If you plan on going let me know and we will meet like we did last time. The Hearing is in Room B at 1:00.
One last and final note - We should all be looking for the story in the Oregonian this next week or so. If you are the first to see it please pass it on to the group!! It will be interesting to see what it says.....hopefully it will be fair and focus on all the great things we have done...hopefully....
So here is the guy to write about the following article: Write to Christopher Conkey at christopher.conkey@wsj.com1 ( I am not sure about the 1??)
WSJ--Front Page
FAST AND FURIOUS
ATV Pitch: Improve Safety
By Making Vehicles Faster
Industry Wants to Lure
Teens Off Adult Models;
Safety Groups Oppose
By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
April 17, 2007; Page A1
Despite warning labels, size restrictions and state laws, more than 40,000 children are seriously injured each year riding all-terrain vehicles. In more than 90% of those cases, the injured weren't on machines designed for young kids, but large, powerful ATVs made for adults, which can weigh up to 800 pounds and zoom up to 70 miles per hour.
Now, in a bid to reshape the rules governing their industry, major ATV manufacturers are pushing a novel solution: bigger, faster models for kids. Specifically, the industry wants to build a new category of "transitional" ATVs aimed at image-conscious 14- and 15-year-olds who disdain small bikes just as they do restaurant kiddie meals.
The proposal is the latest attempt by a controversial industry to stay one step ahead of its federal regulator. Ever since ATV injuries became headline news, manufacturers have pushed hard to shape industry rules before they were imposed from above. This time, they're adopting a counterintuitive position: Make ATVs safer by making some of them more dangerous.
Industry officials say transitional ATVs would reduce fatalities because they would encourage kids to ride models more appropriate to their age. "Almost every time you read about young teenagers getting hurt on ATVs, they're riding larger, faster models intended for adults," says Roy Watson, general manager of the legal department for Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, a leading ATV manufacturer and proponent of transitional ATVs.
Many consumer advocates say beefing up youth options would undercut safety messages and put younger riders on more powerful machines. "Kids are being injured...and the only solution they come up with is bigger, faster machines for teenagers?" asks Carolyn Anderson, whose 14-year-old son James died after crashing on a 700-pound ATV. Ms. Anderson is the co-founder of Concerned Families for ATV Safety, a group for families with children killed or injured in ATV wrecks. "That's no solution at all," she says. "They want to sell machines."
Rachel Weintraub, an attorney with the Consumer Federation of America, who has emerged as the industry's chief critic, says ATVs should be treated like cars. "Just because a 12-year-old can see over the dashboard doesn't mean you want to give them the keys to your car," she says.
Manufacturers are pressing ahead, revising industry standards and lobbying the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that regulates ATVs, to sign off on their plan. Past industry agreements with the CPSC have limited youth models to certain sizes and speeds.
The debate raises a tough question: What should governments and industries do to protect kids if parents let them engage in hazardous play? "There's a lot about parental responsibility in here," says Susan Halbert, who started an industry-funded ATV safety program for the 4-H, a youth organization, after witnessing children competing to see who could slide sideways the furthest on ATVs. "If we can't deal with that issue, there's no simple answer."
Introduced by the U.S. arm of Honda Motor Co. in 1970 as a vehicle with three bulbous tires -- they were called "all-terrain cycles" at the time -- ATVs were virtually unregulated. ATVs have replaced horses and small tractors on many farms and ranches, and are also ridden for fun on public dirt trails or private property. In the 1980s, concerns started mounting about their propensity to tip over. The CPSC, charged with protecting the public "against unreasonable risks of injuries associated with consumer products," began to consider rules in 1985 to curtail ATV-related injuries.
Two years later, the commission filed suit against the five leading manufacturers, seeking to declare ATVs an "imminently hazardous consumer product," the agency's harshest possible language short of an outright ban. If approved, the move could have led to severe restrictions on ATV sales. The lawsuit was settled a year later. Honda, Yamaha and the other companies agreed to stop producing three-wheelers; instead, they started manufacturing four wheelers, which were considered less accident prone.
To placate the CPSC, manufacturers devised a set of restrictions on speed and engine size for ATVs aimed at young riders. Today, dealerships sell "Y-6" models for children 6 and older that have a top speed of 15 mph, and "Y-12" models for riders 12 and up that have a top speed of 30 mph. Adult models are designed for riders 16 and older. The companies also agreed to monitor dealerships to try to stop them from selling adult ATVs if kids under 16 were the intended users.
The CPSC, satisfied with the manufacturers' actions, halted its own attempt to craft regulations in 1991. In effect, it adopted the industry's plan as its own.
Most ATVs are sold through dealerships, which adhere to industry standards because of their close ties to manufacturers, which in turn can be sued by the CPSC.
For a while, the measures appeared to work. ATV-related injuries for children fell from 42,700 in 1985 to a low of 17,900 in 1993, even as the number of ATVs in use more than quadrupled.
But in the late 1990s, ATVs exploded in popularity as the industry rolled out a broader range of machines for work and play. Children gravitated toward adult models, despite the rules designed to avoid that problem, and injuries began to climb. The industry sold an estimated 856,000 ATVs last year, up from 326,000 a decade earlier.
In 2005, the most recent year for which complete data are available, 40,400 children went to hospitals with ATV-related injuries. In 2004, at least 155 children were killed in ATV accidents, the most recently available number, a nearly threefold increase from a decade earlier. The industry notes that the rate of deaths hasn't changed much because the number of machines in use has also soared.
One main cause of death and injury: Teenagers shying away from smaller bikes. Some teens physically outgrow youth ATVs before they are 16, leading parents to give them keys to adult models.
"I am guilty of that," said Cary Hernandez, vice president of ATVMiaXtreme, a rider group in Miami, who allows her son, Giovanni, 13, to ride an adult ATV because he's too big for the youth models the CPSC says he should ride. "I can't put him on [them] because his knees drop to the floors," says Ms. Hernandez, who works as an accounts manager at the Port of Miami. "I would say 75% of kids ride what they're not supposed to be riding."
ATV makers have long wanted to break free from what Roger Hagie, a spokesman for Kawasaki Motors Corp. USA, calls, "the tyranny of age and size restrictions." David Murray, an attorney who represents Yamaha, says the industry suggested transitional ATVs to the CPSC in the late 1990s, but the agency, then under Democratic leadership, rebuffed the idea.
In recent years, industry officials sensed the CPSC becoming more sympathetic, given the data illustrating injuries sustained by kids riding adult vehicles. The CPSC had also expressed concern over a surge in imports from China of adult-size ATVs marketed to teenagers. Makers of these vehicles didn't sign on to the industry's agreement with the CPSC. Imports from China -- Baja is one of the most popular brands -- typically sell for less than the average ATV price of $5,700, and have grabbed as much as 20% of the market in recent years, according to industry estimates.
In 2005, the CPSC, citing a "dramatic increase" in ATV-related deaths and injuries, said it was considering new safety rules. Around the same time, the industry started reworking its own standards.
The proposed "transitional" category -- or "Y-14" -- for ages 14 and up, would have no limitations on size and a maximum speed of 38 mph. Manufacturers, through their trade association, the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, also want to turn "Y-12" into "Y-10," which would allow dealers to sell ATVs with top speeds of 30 mph to children as young as 10.
These changes, if they're approved, would bring ATV rules more in line with those governing off-road motorcycles. Even though off-road motorcycles are statistically more dangerous for kids than ATVs, they don't face stringent size rules. ATV makers, who usually also make dirt bikes, have long called the discrepancy unfair.
Last month, industry officials traveled to CPSC headquarters in Bethesda, Md., to press their case at an open meeting attended by much of the CPSC's ATV review team. Paul Frantz, a consultant who conducts research for the industry, argued that current restrictions on youth ATVs make them unattractive to young teenagers. A class of more potent ATVs for teens, Mr. Frantz said, would have a better chance of dissuading them from using adult models.
That met with a little skepticism from the CPSC staff. "You're weighting attractiveness a little heavily, don't you think?" asked Bob Ochsman, director of one of the agency's safety divisions.
The ATV industry is in a strong position because its regulator doesn't have the kind of statutory authority that many others in Washington do. In fact, the CPSC is legally bound to accept voluntary industry standards if they "eliminate or adequately reduce the risk of injury," and manufacturers show "substantial compliance" with them. CPSC in general relies more on coaxing industries than crafting its own mandates. Last year, a CPSC staff report recommended lifting size restrictions on youth ATVs, as the industry proposes, to steer kids away from adult ATVs. But the staff didn't support the idea of higher speed limits, which remains a major sticking point, or adopting a new Y-14 transitional category.
Manufacturers now want the CPSC to take the industry's approach and make it mandatory. That would give the CPSC the ability to move against sellers of Chinese-made adult ATVs who don't comply with the rules, something it currently cannot do.
Giovanni Ortega, 13, riding an adult bike similar to the industry's proposed transitional model.
Elizabeth Leland, an economist who heads the CPSC's ATV review team, says the agency is leaning toward allowing bigger sizes, in line with the earlier staff report. The agency is thinking about requiring manufacturers to offer all ATV buyers a free training course.
"An awful lot of people buy ATVs and they get on them and go," says Ms. Leland. "Unfortunately, that does lead to injuries and deaths."
These efforts all face a broader problem: Not enough parents recognize that ATVs can be dangerous.
One reason may be the vehicles' design. Unlike big dirt bikes, large ATVs are easy for children to mount. Unlike cars, ATVs accelerate with a flick of the right thumb.
Some argue that children and ATVs simply don't mix. Massachusetts forbids kids younger than 10 from riding ATVs, for example. Ms. Anderson, of Concerned Families, is pushing to raise that to 14.
"Parents typically say that if they had known better about the ATV riding risks, they would have never put their children on an ATV," says Dr. Jeffrey Upperman, director of trauma, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, who has done studies on ATV injuries. He thinks all ATVs are too dangerous for children, including transitional ones.
The Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, the industry trade group, offers new ATV buyers as much as $100 to complete a four-hour instructional course, but only 14% do so. Industry officials also speak of the "second-dealer phenomenon:" After discovering that one dealer won't sell a full-size bike intended for a teenager, adult buyers go to a second store and instead say the ATV is meant for them.
Sometimes, adults simply tell a fib. Bev Stubbs, vice president of Salem Sand Club, an Oregon group that organizes family ATV outings, recently purchased an adult-size model for her 14-year-old niece. She convinced the dealer it was for a grown-up. "If they knew we were buying it for her, they wouldn't have sold it to us," she says.
Ms. Stubbs says kids are going to ride larger ATVs anyway, so it's better to emphasize the importance of safety training and adult supervision. As for government officials, "I don't think they have a right to tell us what we can or can't do with our kids."
One crisp recent morning, Yamaha's Mr. Watson took his 10-year-old son to Hungry Valley, a popular vehicular recreation area north of Los Angeles, to teach him how to ride a small "Y-6" model ATV. Young children from other groups zoomed by on a variety of adult ATVs. A man riding without a helmet swerved around the dusty parking lot with a baby in his arms. One kid, jerking back and forth, rear-ended the ATV in front of him.
"Where are the parents on this one?" moaned Mr. Watson, pointing at a small child bouncing about on a Y-12 model.
The industry's new standards will be published later this year. The CPSC has to decide whether they pass muster. The commission is handicapped at the moment because a vacancy denies it the quorum required to enact rules. To fill the spot, President Bush recently nominated Michael Baroody, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, to the post of chairman. The pick has drawn fire from consumer groups, which fear the nominee is too close to companies the agency regulates. He will likely face opposition from the Democratic Congress, which has to confirm the nomination.
--Dean Treftz contributed to this article.
On another note, it looks like SB101 will have a work session on Monday. Anyone is welcome and I plan on attending to show my support for it....It isn't a hearing so you needn't feel that you have to go. Save your time-off work for if and when it hits the floor!! I promise to fill everyone in on Monday when I return. If you plan on going let me know and we will meet like we did last time. The Hearing is in Room B at 1:00.
One last and final note - We should all be looking for the story in the Oregonian this next week or so. If you are the first to see it please pass it on to the group!! It will be interesting to see what it says.....hopefully it will be fair and focus on all the great things we have done...hopefully....
So here is the guy to write about the following article: Write to Christopher Conkey at christopher.conkey@wsj.com1 ( I am not sure about the 1??)
WSJ--Front Page
FAST AND FURIOUS
ATV Pitch: Improve Safety
By Making Vehicles Faster
Industry Wants to Lure
Teens Off Adult Models;
Safety Groups Oppose
By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
April 17, 2007; Page A1
Despite warning labels, size restrictions and state laws, more than 40,000 children are seriously injured each year riding all-terrain vehicles. In more than 90% of those cases, the injured weren't on machines designed for young kids, but large, powerful ATVs made for adults, which can weigh up to 800 pounds and zoom up to 70 miles per hour.
Now, in a bid to reshape the rules governing their industry, major ATV manufacturers are pushing a novel solution: bigger, faster models for kids. Specifically, the industry wants to build a new category of "transitional" ATVs aimed at image-conscious 14- and 15-year-olds who disdain small bikes just as they do restaurant kiddie meals.
The proposal is the latest attempt by a controversial industry to stay one step ahead of its federal regulator. Ever since ATV injuries became headline news, manufacturers have pushed hard to shape industry rules before they were imposed from above. This time, they're adopting a counterintuitive position: Make ATVs safer by making some of them more dangerous.
Industry officials say transitional ATVs would reduce fatalities because they would encourage kids to ride models more appropriate to their age. "Almost every time you read about young teenagers getting hurt on ATVs, they're riding larger, faster models intended for adults," says Roy Watson, general manager of the legal department for Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, a leading ATV manufacturer and proponent of transitional ATVs.
Many consumer advocates say beefing up youth options would undercut safety messages and put younger riders on more powerful machines. "Kids are being injured...and the only solution they come up with is bigger, faster machines for teenagers?" asks Carolyn Anderson, whose 14-year-old son James died after crashing on a 700-pound ATV. Ms. Anderson is the co-founder of Concerned Families for ATV Safety, a group for families with children killed or injured in ATV wrecks. "That's no solution at all," she says. "They want to sell machines."
Rachel Weintraub, an attorney with the Consumer Federation of America, who has emerged as the industry's chief critic, says ATVs should be treated like cars. "Just because a 12-year-old can see over the dashboard doesn't mean you want to give them the keys to your car," she says.
Manufacturers are pressing ahead, revising industry standards and lobbying the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that regulates ATVs, to sign off on their plan. Past industry agreements with the CPSC have limited youth models to certain sizes and speeds.
The debate raises a tough question: What should governments and industries do to protect kids if parents let them engage in hazardous play? "There's a lot about parental responsibility in here," says Susan Halbert, who started an industry-funded ATV safety program for the 4-H, a youth organization, after witnessing children competing to see who could slide sideways the furthest on ATVs. "If we can't deal with that issue, there's no simple answer."
Introduced by the U.S. arm of Honda Motor Co. in 1970 as a vehicle with three bulbous tires -- they were called "all-terrain cycles" at the time -- ATVs were virtually unregulated. ATVs have replaced horses and small tractors on many farms and ranches, and are also ridden for fun on public dirt trails or private property. In the 1980s, concerns started mounting about their propensity to tip over. The CPSC, charged with protecting the public "against unreasonable risks of injuries associated with consumer products," began to consider rules in 1985 to curtail ATV-related injuries.
Two years later, the commission filed suit against the five leading manufacturers, seeking to declare ATVs an "imminently hazardous consumer product," the agency's harshest possible language short of an outright ban. If approved, the move could have led to severe restrictions on ATV sales. The lawsuit was settled a year later. Honda, Yamaha and the other companies agreed to stop producing three-wheelers; instead, they started manufacturing four wheelers, which were considered less accident prone.
To placate the CPSC, manufacturers devised a set of restrictions on speed and engine size for ATVs aimed at young riders. Today, dealerships sell "Y-6" models for children 6 and older that have a top speed of 15 mph, and "Y-12" models for riders 12 and up that have a top speed of 30 mph. Adult models are designed for riders 16 and older. The companies also agreed to monitor dealerships to try to stop them from selling adult ATVs if kids under 16 were the intended users.
The CPSC, satisfied with the manufacturers' actions, halted its own attempt to craft regulations in 1991. In effect, it adopted the industry's plan as its own.
Most ATVs are sold through dealerships, which adhere to industry standards because of their close ties to manufacturers, which in turn can be sued by the CPSC.
For a while, the measures appeared to work. ATV-related injuries for children fell from 42,700 in 1985 to a low of 17,900 in 1993, even as the number of ATVs in use more than quadrupled.
But in the late 1990s, ATVs exploded in popularity as the industry rolled out a broader range of machines for work and play. Children gravitated toward adult models, despite the rules designed to avoid that problem, and injuries began to climb. The industry sold an estimated 856,000 ATVs last year, up from 326,000 a decade earlier.
In 2005, the most recent year for which complete data are available, 40,400 children went to hospitals with ATV-related injuries. In 2004, at least 155 children were killed in ATV accidents, the most recently available number, a nearly threefold increase from a decade earlier. The industry notes that the rate of deaths hasn't changed much because the number of machines in use has also soared.
One main cause of death and injury: Teenagers shying away from smaller bikes. Some teens physically outgrow youth ATVs before they are 16, leading parents to give them keys to adult models.
"I am guilty of that," said Cary Hernandez, vice president of ATVMiaXtreme, a rider group in Miami, who allows her son, Giovanni, 13, to ride an adult ATV because he's too big for the youth models the CPSC says he should ride. "I can't put him on [them] because his knees drop to the floors," says Ms. Hernandez, who works as an accounts manager at the Port of Miami. "I would say 75% of kids ride what they're not supposed to be riding."
ATV makers have long wanted to break free from what Roger Hagie, a spokesman for Kawasaki Motors Corp. USA, calls, "the tyranny of age and size restrictions." David Murray, an attorney who represents Yamaha, says the industry suggested transitional ATVs to the CPSC in the late 1990s, but the agency, then under Democratic leadership, rebuffed the idea.
In recent years, industry officials sensed the CPSC becoming more sympathetic, given the data illustrating injuries sustained by kids riding adult vehicles. The CPSC had also expressed concern over a surge in imports from China of adult-size ATVs marketed to teenagers. Makers of these vehicles didn't sign on to the industry's agreement with the CPSC. Imports from China -- Baja is one of the most popular brands -- typically sell for less than the average ATV price of $5,700, and have grabbed as much as 20% of the market in recent years, according to industry estimates.
In 2005, the CPSC, citing a "dramatic increase" in ATV-related deaths and injuries, said it was considering new safety rules. Around the same time, the industry started reworking its own standards.
The proposed "transitional" category -- or "Y-14" -- for ages 14 and up, would have no limitations on size and a maximum speed of 38 mph. Manufacturers, through their trade association, the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, also want to turn "Y-12" into "Y-10," which would allow dealers to sell ATVs with top speeds of 30 mph to children as young as 10.
These changes, if they're approved, would bring ATV rules more in line with those governing off-road motorcycles. Even though off-road motorcycles are statistically more dangerous for kids than ATVs, they don't face stringent size rules. ATV makers, who usually also make dirt bikes, have long called the discrepancy unfair.
Last month, industry officials traveled to CPSC headquarters in Bethesda, Md., to press their case at an open meeting attended by much of the CPSC's ATV review team. Paul Frantz, a consultant who conducts research for the industry, argued that current restrictions on youth ATVs make them unattractive to young teenagers. A class of more potent ATVs for teens, Mr. Frantz said, would have a better chance of dissuading them from using adult models.
That met with a little skepticism from the CPSC staff. "You're weighting attractiveness a little heavily, don't you think?" asked Bob Ochsman, director of one of the agency's safety divisions.
The ATV industry is in a strong position because its regulator doesn't have the kind of statutory authority that many others in Washington do. In fact, the CPSC is legally bound to accept voluntary industry standards if they "eliminate or adequately reduce the risk of injury," and manufacturers show "substantial compliance" with them. CPSC in general relies more on coaxing industries than crafting its own mandates. Last year, a CPSC staff report recommended lifting size restrictions on youth ATVs, as the industry proposes, to steer kids away from adult ATVs. But the staff didn't support the idea of higher speed limits, which remains a major sticking point, or adopting a new Y-14 transitional category.
Manufacturers now want the CPSC to take the industry's approach and make it mandatory. That would give the CPSC the ability to move against sellers of Chinese-made adult ATVs who don't comply with the rules, something it currently cannot do.
Giovanni Ortega, 13, riding an adult bike similar to the industry's proposed transitional model.
Elizabeth Leland, an economist who heads the CPSC's ATV review team, says the agency is leaning toward allowing bigger sizes, in line with the earlier staff report. The agency is thinking about requiring manufacturers to offer all ATV buyers a free training course.
"An awful lot of people buy ATVs and they get on them and go," says Ms. Leland. "Unfortunately, that does lead to injuries and deaths."
These efforts all face a broader problem: Not enough parents recognize that ATVs can be dangerous.
One reason may be the vehicles' design. Unlike big dirt bikes, large ATVs are easy for children to mount. Unlike cars, ATVs accelerate with a flick of the right thumb.
Some argue that children and ATVs simply don't mix. Massachusetts forbids kids younger than 10 from riding ATVs, for example. Ms. Anderson, of Concerned Families, is pushing to raise that to 14.
"Parents typically say that if they had known better about the ATV riding risks, they would have never put their children on an ATV," says Dr. Jeffrey Upperman, director of trauma, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, who has done studies on ATV injuries. He thinks all ATVs are too dangerous for children, including transitional ones.
The Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, the industry trade group, offers new ATV buyers as much as $100 to complete a four-hour instructional course, but only 14% do so. Industry officials also speak of the "second-dealer phenomenon:" After discovering that one dealer won't sell a full-size bike intended for a teenager, adult buyers go to a second store and instead say the ATV is meant for them.
Sometimes, adults simply tell a fib. Bev Stubbs, vice president of Salem Sand Club, an Oregon group that organizes family ATV outings, recently purchased an adult-size model for her 14-year-old niece. She convinced the dealer it was for a grown-up. "If they knew we were buying it for her, they wouldn't have sold it to us," she says.
Ms. Stubbs says kids are going to ride larger ATVs anyway, so it's better to emphasize the importance of safety training and adult supervision. As for government officials, "I don't think they have a right to tell us what we can or can't do with our kids."
One crisp recent morning, Yamaha's Mr. Watson took his 10-year-old son to Hungry Valley, a popular vehicular recreation area north of Los Angeles, to teach him how to ride a small "Y-6" model ATV. Young children from other groups zoomed by on a variety of adult ATVs. A man riding without a helmet swerved around the dusty parking lot with a baby in his arms. One kid, jerking back and forth, rear-ended the ATV in front of him.
"Where are the parents on this one?" moaned Mr. Watson, pointing at a small child bouncing about on a Y-12 model.
The industry's new standards will be published later this year. The CPSC has to decide whether they pass muster. The commission is handicapped at the moment because a vacancy denies it the quorum required to enact rules. To fill the spot, President Bush recently nominated Michael Baroody, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, to the post of chairman. The pick has drawn fire from consumer groups, which fear the nominee is too close to companies the agency regulates. He will likely face opposition from the Democratic Congress, which has to confirm the nomination.
--Dean Treftz contributed to this article.