ATVs: Child Killing Machines

A typical week for all terrain vehicles: dead are a six-year-old, seven-year-old, and 13-year-old.

It's becoming an epidemic as children die while riding ATVs nearly every day, and laws protecting them are almost non-existent, according to excellent reporting by the Oregonian.

*On average, 375 people are hospitalized each day, and the severity of ATV injuries often means enormous medical bills.... *

Record numbers of riders end up in emergency rooms and morgues as accidents kill about 800 people a year and injure an estimated 136,700.

Isn't it about time that helmets are required for all under aged ATV drivers and that children be limited to smaller, less powerful models?

Libertarian idealists might say the government shouldn't try to parent.
It's natural selection after all; thinning the herd of offspring from parents too stupid to protect their kids. But pragmatists should see that we are all paying for this "freedom."

Taxpayers picked up nearly a quarter of the $50 million in hospital costs for 1,795 Oregon ATV trauma cases from 2000 through
2005.

It is absurd that children be required to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle but not an ATV. And helmets don't help much though when a few hundred pounds of metal is laying on top of a kid a few years out of diapers.

States like Oklahomawithout any ATV legislation have a collective death rate twice that of states with any legislation, advocates say.

ATVs should be matched to the appropriate age group: the smaller the kid, the smaller and slower the vehicle, and for God's sake, require helmets!

Source: The Oregonian