The Chairman of the CPSC, Inez Tenenbaum, stated: "Far too many people are losing their lives and sustaining life-threatening injuries, which in many cases are preventable. CPSC is working diligently to ensure that the ATVs on the market meet mandatory standards and to promote safe riding practices."
In April 2009, it became mandatory for ATV distributors and manufacturers to offer free hands-on training through their dealers to first-time purchasers, as well as to age appropriate members of their immediate families, within a reasonable time from purchase.
History Of The ATV>
Back in 1970, a California engineer uncrated the first all-terrain vehicle (ATV) which had been imported to the U.S. from Japan. As an employee for Honda Motor Corporation, his job was to evaluate the product for his employer, who hoped that its new product would take the U.S. by storm and result in a buying frenzy.
The engineer took the machine out for a ride and promptly flipped it over, the first in a long line of now predictable accidents. Alarmed, he warned his employer that the ATV was unsafe. Honda didn't listen to him. Instead, it spent millions of dollars marketing the ATV to American families as wholesome family fun. The result: many decades of heartbreaking carnage for which the ATV manufacturers blame the rider, even when the rider is a child.
ATV-Related Injuries & Deaths Are Prevalent To Kids 16 & Under
According to the ATV manufacturers, more than 10,000 deaths and millions of serious injuries later, those are not the result of driving their inherently dangerous ATVs. It's never the machine, it's always due to rider error. This is their motto and only alibi. The fact that children under the age of sixteen bear the brunt of this carnage doesn't give the industry much cause for alarm. In fact, they downplay the grim statistics.
For the past three years, ATV industry publications have pronounced that ATV-related deaths and injuries are decreasing. However, numbers published by the medical community show opposite results. An estimated 704,000 people were injured operating ATVs in the U.S. from 2004 through 2008, and during the same period, 3,372 people were killed. One-third to one-quarter of those deaths were children under the age of sixteen.
For those of us without a vested interest in ATVs, operation of these machines should at least be restricted to persons over the age of sixteen who have a valid driver's license. ATV manufacturers and dealers should support legislation in the states that supports these restrictions.
A. Jason Kerckhoff is a San Diego serious injury lawyer and the President of Kerckhoff Law, APC, a San Diego wrongful death law firm dedicated to representing people who have been seriously injured or killed, and the families of loved ones who have suffered death caused by the negligence of another.
A. Jason Kerckhoff has been successfully obtaining excellent results for his clients for more than twenty-five years. He has the highest rating in Martindale-Hubbell, which is the preeminent company that rates attorneys not only for their abilities, but for their ethics. These ratings are obtained by peers in the San Diego community, and a small percentage of lawyers are privileged to have achieved this rating.
Serving all of southern California, including San Diego.
