Post by Wyldcomfort on May 25, 2007 6:53:17 GMT -5
The Oregonian is back at it again.. How many times can they beat the same dog??? A couple of serious errors on this story...There is and has been a helmet law in effect for children under the age of 18. SB 101 adds it must have a fastened chin strap. The graph they showed had the fatals added each year so it was a collective sum - of course it would go up. Once again they discount supervision and training and refer to SB101 as a training bill...hmmmm. I don't think this article is for our eyes here in Oregon. This is a grevious overstatement of accounts and is so sensationalized it borders deception. I for one am tired of the same old bull from the same old people. It is obviously clear there is another agenda as we have been working very hard together on the most comprehensive legislation in the Nation of which they have had no part. Our Legislators have bent over backwards to put this together.... If you spend much time searching the internet you will find the same language, same people, same stories, and same drama..... Obviously they are not going away, obviously they are going to keep beating our favorite dog....so maybe it is high time we make it clear we have had enough. This article is nothing more than another media attempt at getting their story out. It will be online for all to see, it freaks out people who know nothing about atvs - but something else it does is push our pup into a fight or flight mode to protect itself from the constant lashing....and our dog doesn't run. Enjoy another unbiased article from the daily fish wrapper...- no integrity. Don't waste your time on a response or letter to them - they wouldn't print it if you did as it would conflict with their campaign......Lindy
Overturned ATVs, dead kids
The newspaper's series "Deceptively dangerous" should lead to rules that keep children off adult-size ATVs L - ook at the graph below showing the ages of people killed in all-terrain vehicle accidents since 1982, when the government started counting. Look at those long, long bars of victims who were 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Look at the shape of the graph.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
It's a mountain -- a mountain of evidence that adult-size ATVs are killing children.
All the carnage linked to ATVs, nearly 8,000 deaths and 2 million serious injuries, cannot be ignored or dismissed any longer. The Oregonian's four-day series "Deceptively dangerous" was a powerful call to action that must be heard over the persistent roar of the ATV lobby.
The series demolished the convenient fiction that ATV crashes are about nothing more than irresponsible riders and inattentive parents. The issue is not the maturity and judgment of a 12-year-old lying in the dirt with a crushed spine but the design, the safety training and the laws governing the 600-pound ATV overturned on his chest.
Yes, "Stupid hurts," as one ATV manufacturer shrugs. But as the series demonstrated, what really maims and kills kids is a completely inadequate regulatory system that relies on stick-on warning labels, wink-and-nod ATV salesmen and voluntary rider training that hardly anyone actually completes.
How long is the Oregon Legislature, cowed by the loud resistance of ATV riders, going to let this go on? How long is Congress going to ignore it? How long is the Consumer Product Safety Commission going to pretend that a voluntary ATV safety regime is good enough?
Yes, ATVs are great fun. Yes, riding is a huge family activity and tradition in Oregon and across the country. Yes, the four-wheeled vehicles can be useful on farms and ranches. And yes, most ATV riders, and especially most families, ride safely.
But kids don't belong on adult-size machines. Ever. The newspaper found that even safety-conscious young riders are one incline, one poorly executed turn, away from a deadly ATV rollover.
These vehicles are dangerously unstable. The manufacturers know it. Federal consumer safety officials know it. ATVs can overturn on riders, especially youngsters, even when they are following safety guidelines. The newspaper analyzed fatal crashes and discovered that overturns were as common among riders who appeared to be obeying basic safety warnings as among those who weren't.
Every year ATV accidents send about 136,000 riders to emergency rooms; they kill 800. A quarter of the dead and nearly one-third of the injured are children. Still, the defenders of ATVs keep telling everyone else to just move along, there's no problem here, as if the trail of death and injuries is nobody's business but theirs. In fact, Oregon taxpayers picked up nearly a quarter of the $50 million in hospital costs for 1,795 ATV trauma cases from 2000 to 2005.
ATV manufacturers agree kids do not belong on adult-size machines. The $5-billion-a-year ATV industry has produced model state laws to restrict young riders. But it didn't lift a finger to help pass such a law in Oregon this spring.
Instead, Oregon lawmakers caved when riding groups rallied against proposed regulations, and buried bills that would have kept kids off adult-sized ATVs, sensibly required children to wear helmets and limited passengers to ATVs designed for them. There's only one left standing, Senate Bill 101, which would require ATV riders to complete a training course before they could drive on public lands.
It makes no sense, none, that Oregon would require children to wear helmets to ride their bicycles around the block but leave them free to ride 70 mph on ATVs without them. Modest changes in the law clearly would save young lives: When Oregon kids started dying in personal watercraft accidents in the 1990s, the state Marine Board banned their use by children younger than 12 and required training and a written test for operators ages 12 to 17. Since 1999, there's only been one personal watercraft fatality in Oregon.
Meanwhile, kids keep getting crushed under ATVs. Look again at that graph of ATV deaths. Look at how the numbers climb at 12 and peak at 14. Did all these hundreds and hundreds of kids die because of their stupidity and recklessness?
Or ours?
Overturned ATVs, dead kids
The newspaper's series "Deceptively dangerous" should lead to rules that keep children off adult-size ATVs L - ook at the graph below showing the ages of people killed in all-terrain vehicle accidents since 1982, when the government started counting. Look at those long, long bars of victims who were 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Look at the shape of the graph.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
It's a mountain -- a mountain of evidence that adult-size ATVs are killing children.
All the carnage linked to ATVs, nearly 8,000 deaths and 2 million serious injuries, cannot be ignored or dismissed any longer. The Oregonian's four-day series "Deceptively dangerous" was a powerful call to action that must be heard over the persistent roar of the ATV lobby.
The series demolished the convenient fiction that ATV crashes are about nothing more than irresponsible riders and inattentive parents. The issue is not the maturity and judgment of a 12-year-old lying in the dirt with a crushed spine but the design, the safety training and the laws governing the 600-pound ATV overturned on his chest.
Yes, "Stupid hurts," as one ATV manufacturer shrugs. But as the series demonstrated, what really maims and kills kids is a completely inadequate regulatory system that relies on stick-on warning labels, wink-and-nod ATV salesmen and voluntary rider training that hardly anyone actually completes.
How long is the Oregon Legislature, cowed by the loud resistance of ATV riders, going to let this go on? How long is Congress going to ignore it? How long is the Consumer Product Safety Commission going to pretend that a voluntary ATV safety regime is good enough?
Yes, ATVs are great fun. Yes, riding is a huge family activity and tradition in Oregon and across the country. Yes, the four-wheeled vehicles can be useful on farms and ranches. And yes, most ATV riders, and especially most families, ride safely.
But kids don't belong on adult-size machines. Ever. The newspaper found that even safety-conscious young riders are one incline, one poorly executed turn, away from a deadly ATV rollover.
These vehicles are dangerously unstable. The manufacturers know it. Federal consumer safety officials know it. ATVs can overturn on riders, especially youngsters, even when they are following safety guidelines. The newspaper analyzed fatal crashes and discovered that overturns were as common among riders who appeared to be obeying basic safety warnings as among those who weren't.
Every year ATV accidents send about 136,000 riders to emergency rooms; they kill 800. A quarter of the dead and nearly one-third of the injured are children. Still, the defenders of ATVs keep telling everyone else to just move along, there's no problem here, as if the trail of death and injuries is nobody's business but theirs. In fact, Oregon taxpayers picked up nearly a quarter of the $50 million in hospital costs for 1,795 ATV trauma cases from 2000 to 2005.
ATV manufacturers agree kids do not belong on adult-size machines. The $5-billion-a-year ATV industry has produced model state laws to restrict young riders. But it didn't lift a finger to help pass such a law in Oregon this spring.
Instead, Oregon lawmakers caved when riding groups rallied against proposed regulations, and buried bills that would have kept kids off adult-sized ATVs, sensibly required children to wear helmets and limited passengers to ATVs designed for them. There's only one left standing, Senate Bill 101, which would require ATV riders to complete a training course before they could drive on public lands.
It makes no sense, none, that Oregon would require children to wear helmets to ride their bicycles around the block but leave them free to ride 70 mph on ATVs without them. Modest changes in the law clearly would save young lives: When Oregon kids started dying in personal watercraft accidents in the 1990s, the state Marine Board banned their use by children younger than 12 and required training and a written test for operators ages 12 to 17. Since 1999, there's only been one personal watercraft fatality in Oregon.
Meanwhile, kids keep getting crushed under ATVs. Look again at that graph of ATV deaths. Look at how the numbers climb at 12 and peak at 14. Did all these hundreds and hundreds of kids die because of their stupidity and recklessness?
Or ours?