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Jim Helmkamp In December a West Virginia mother pleaded not guilty to child neglect charges stemming from an all-terrain vehicle wreck in which her two-year-old son was hurt. She ran off the road into a ditch, and the ATV flipped several times, according to police reports.
Also last year, John Rowe, the 24th ATV-related death of 2008, was critically injured when his ATV hit another ATV on a public roadway in McDowell County . Rowe, under the influence of alcohol at the time of his crash, died five days later in a Charleston hospital. His death underscores that ATV riding is a risky behavior.
Unfortunately, West Virginia is one of the more dangerous places to ride an ATV. That’s because lawmakers have failed to adopt measures that pro-safety advocates and even the manufacturers have lobbied for.
Last year, state leaders let die in the House of Delegates a bill that would have banned ATVs from all paved roads. This common-sense measure included a provision that counties could make their own regulations. They could even override the ban!
Lawmakers failed to act even though a majority of ATV deaths occur on paved surfaces. As the Bluefield Telegraph wrote in an editorial in November, “State lawmakers consistently refuse to buck up and take on a hot-button issue.”
Currently in West Virginia , all-terrain vehicles must stay off only roads with a centerline stripe or roads of more than two lanes. This lax regulatory climate helped create a death toll higher than any other state’s – 54 fatalities in 2006.
Fortunately, safety awareness messages are finally getting through to the public, because 2007’s death toll was down to 35. That reduction is heartening, but the number of deaths is still too high.
This is due, in part, to not having an age limit on who can operate an ATV. West Virginia kids as young as 6 or 7 are operating ATVs. Passengers as young as 15 to 18 months have been injured or even killed on ATVs in this state – a state where a quarter of the population rides ATVs. Some 15 percent of people who die are passengers, and many of these are teenage girls between 12 and 15 years old.
In the 11 years I have been studying this problem at the West Virginia University Injury Control Research Center , ATV deaths have been a growing public health issue. Deaths have increased from an average of 13 per year from 1990 to 1999 to 33 per year from 2000 to 2008. Fortunately that number is declining. But we still need to adopt better habits at the individual level and tougher legislation at the state level to create a safer environment. For instance: * Even if helmets aren’t required by law, people should wear them because they reduce the severity of a head injury
* Parents must understand that many ATVs were not designed for passenger use – check with the manufacturer to be sure
* Some 30 percent of the deaths in West Virginia over the last three to four years have involved alcohol or drugs Most important, ATVs should never be ridden on paved roads, streets and highways where they are patently unsafe. ATVs have huge, spongy tires that don’t grip hard surfaces such as asphalt or concrete. They were not designed to be compatible with pavement. Many of the worst accidents that occur on roads involve collisions with other vehicles, rolling off the road, hitting trees, rocks or telephone poles.
Law enforcement officers currently have their hands tied. Last year, Marshall County Sheriff John Gruzinskas pointed to hundreds of riders streaming into West Virginia from Ohio, where ATVs are banned from paved roads. "We have trailer loads of ATVs coming to Marshall County that are people from Ohio ," Gruzinskas told WTOV TV. He said West Virginia needs tougher laws to help curb accidents and deaths.
Of course safety advocates don’t want to criminalize ATV users on their own property. But even though ATVs can be a lot of fun, they are inherently dangerous machines because of their increasing size and ability to go as fast as 75 m.p.h.
People who operate them should by all means have fun, but they must also keep in mind that driving unsafely puts others at risk.
And the West Virginia Legislature puts an entire population at risk by declining to pass even the mildest lifesaving measures. Let’s hope the 2009 session proves a cause for celebration rather than shame.
Jim Helmkamp, Ph.D., is director of the West Virginia University Injury Control Research Center.
Source: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/090113-helmkamp-columnsatvlegislature.html |
