Off-road vehicles contribute significantly to accident-related deaths and emergency-room treatments.
A family and community remains distraught with despair after a young life is taken too quickly by a careless accident involving a dirt bike, a parked car, and a father-son duo (http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x2082724440/In-fatal-crashs-wake-ATVs-on-roads-vex-Plainfield-police#axzz2PtAf41Jx) . In 2011 there were 327 reported deaths and 107,500 estimated emergency-room treatments given for injuries related to ATV accidents. (http://www.atvsafety.gov/stats.html) Although these numbers seem to be steadily decreasing, the risk is still present in the use of these off-road vehicles, especially when they’re operated on public roads.
The steadily decreasing numbers fail to reassure concerned parents, care-givers, and citizens.
Though these vehicles have virtually become over-powered by the fatal side effects and possibilities, it still remains a popular past time of thousands of local residents. Jeff Perry, an avid driver of ATVs and dirt bikes who had been participating in the family activity for as long as he can remember states, “ It’s only becomes a safety hazard when the person driving doesn’t know what he’s doing. I think they should know how to drive the things before they go out on the trails or the road.” Though these vehicles are specifically named “off-road” vehicles for a purpose, but this never fails to stop their supporters. Mary Anne Ives, a concerned driver, mother, and detractor of the recreational use of off road vehicles relates, “with anything it’s the responsibility of the driver to make it a safe journey or not. One of the concerns I have is I have seen kids in this neighborhood using ATVs on the road. It’s very disconcerting because they’re obviously aren’t supposed to be on the road and, as a driver on these roads, it adds a heightened risk of [my] responsibility not to hit them.”
Although it has become publicly frowned upon by many, it is currently not specifically stated in the “Connecticut Statutes Title 14 Motor Vehicles” as illegal to operate a “snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle” on anything other than a public highway. The Connecticut ATV Laws also lack an infarction for operating an ATV, or vehicle similar to one, at night, without safety equipment (helmets and eye protection), or below a certain age as it is in other states, (http://www.atvsafety.gov/legislation/legislation.html). Revising these state statutes could have a lasting positive impact on the death and injury toll created by ATVs.
The question remains whether it’s worth the risk to drive these off-road vehicles on public roads, or at all. Connecticut’s state government has proposed a bill to dedicate state land specifically to the use of ATVs, dirt bikes, and vehicles of similar characteristics (http://www.housedems.ct.gov/Mikutel/2013/pr045_2013-02-14.html). It is still undecided whether this would eliminate the problem at hand. Reassuringly to the off-road vehicle community, both parties state that the ATV industry has become too powerful for its total elimination to remain a possibility.
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