I wouldn’t. My cousin was thrown from one and broke her neck, and had to spend several months in a wheelchair. (Thank god she didn’t suffer any permanent damage!) And SHE was an adult.
To each his/her own. I’ll have to check pictures to see how young the kids were. Thinking about it, I imagine 5 sounds a little young. I’m sure it was under 10, tho.
Of course they were shooting 22s, bb guns, arrows, using fireworks, building and lighting fires, climbing trees, riding horses, etc. All potentially hazardous activities. I’d imagine it depends on the kids, and the lessons you teach them, and how you supervise them.
Of the many folk I personally know who have many motorized toys, the only injuries happened to intoxicated adults, rather than kids.
0.58% is one in 172.4, not one in 700.
0.0011% is one in 90,910.
I would let my kids do all of those other things, and then some. ATVs, however, not going to happen (moot point, as my “kids” are all adults now)
Yeah, I didn’t mention that aspect, but I, too, see them as a crass over-indulgence.
Children in farming communities grow up faster than most children in the cities or suburbs. That’s one reason why farms are exempted from a lot of the minimum age laws regarding employment, operating equipment, etc.
I was mowing the grass and chopping wood when I was 11.
Depends on how stupid they are and how much I loved/cared about them.
Me too, in the suburbs.
Better an ATV than a horse.
I had my kid on a motorcycle at around 4, and on skis at 16 months.
If I had kids, I would assume they’d be like my brother and me (hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD - it’s 75% heritable) and he managed to hurt himself only fairly mildly but cost himself five thousand dollars in repairs to fix his in-law’s damaged ATV. Last year.
Sorry, kids, you can ride on an ATV when you’re all grown up.
NEVER.
No, I don’t have kids, and really, I know parents have little control over decisions kids make after a certain age. However, at my old hospital, springtime was organ donor season, and we can thank ATVs for that; we probably got as many from those as everything else put together.
Mama, is that you?:p:D
Yep. Total suburb kid, had chores including mowing the lawn starting at age 10. Push gas mower.
Sorry, fat finger error in quick and dirty spreadsheet. The numbers are:
- 23,500,000 kids 12-17
- One quarter rode ATV’s in last year = 5,875,000
- 37,000 serious injuries = 1 in every 158.78 young riders
- 74 deaths = 1 in every 79,391.89 young riders
The odds of any given young rider being seriously injured are about 1/3rd of 1%. The odds of any given young rider dying are truly miniscule.
The better denominator would be injuries/deaths per hours ridden, but there’s no way that I know of to get that information so injuries/deaths per rider will have to do.
I know of 2 people who have been in ATV accidents. One is permanently paralyzed and the other was in a coma and is now “not the same” mentally. I don’t think I’d let a kid ride in one.
Also, the reports of the incident in the OP are conflicting. One says the mother was not with the child and others say the she struggled to free her daughter from the tipped over car that was submerged in water. Sounds horrific in any case.
I doubt those numbers are complete and they seem really low unless everyone that I know that has one is just unusually stupid or unlucky. My best friend hit a hole in pasture one night flipping his end over end. He got knocked out when he landed. The problem was he landed face first in a fire ant mound and got stung hundreds of times before someone found him and had to spend almost a week in critical care. Is that recorded as an ATV accident or an insect encounter? Somehow I suspect it wasn’t classified at all.
The spoiled little girl that I used to babysit flipped hers and broke her arm. The list goes on and on. As I noted before, almost everyone that I know that has owned one has gotten injured by it unless they just treat them like an overpriced golf cart. I flipped a large one end over end coming down a hill and got ejected only to have it land on top of me. That may not technically be a “serious injury” but I couldn’t walk very well for a couple of weeks and I know that isn’t recorded anywhere.
The problem with most ATV’s is the center of gravity is all wrong. It is very easy to flip one or get ejected at any angle. That isn’t good when you are talking about a machine that weighs hundreds of pounds that is meant to go through woods, rocky ground or water. They also tend to have terrible understeer especially on wet grass. That means that you can be approaching a barbed wire fence, a wall or car and not much happens when you turn the handlebars. You can sail straight into an obstacle at high speed if you don’t plan correctly.
They are uniquely dangerous machines because of those problems. The only good thing I can say about them is that 4-wheelers are a little better than the old 3-wheelers that were even worse and were effectively banned because they were so dangerous.
I gave the cites and they are the best that I can find. I’m going with “confirmation bias” in your specific case. How many people that you know have ridden an ATV and not been in an accident?
I know a lot of people that have ridden them casually and briefly and not been hurt. It isn’t that hard to do if you just putter around a pasture at 10 mph but that is not what people generally buy them for. I know few people that have owned them and not been injured. They are much more dangerous when you get some confidence and experience and have to figure out the stability limits the hard way because they can throw you in any direction when they roll.
Here are some other references:
"Inez Tenebaum, chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, called ATVs one of the “deadliest” products that the commission oversees.
“Every year 700 people die and 136,000 go to the emergency room because of ATV related injuries,” Tenenbaum told NBC."
“Children are not developmentally capable of operating these heavy, complex machines,” Sandra Hassink, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said. “The American Academy of Pediatrics warns all parents that no child under the age of 16 should drive or ride an ATV.”
Those are not trivial numbers. In fact, they are absurd on a time ridden or per mile basis.
No kids myself, but a former classmate’s son killed himself with this thing 2 or 3 years ago (serious lack of parental supervision, but still…), so I must say I’m quite wary of them.
Your numbers apparently include all riders, this thread is about young riders. From the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project:
[/quote]
Hospitalizations for ATV injury among children ages 0–17 rose from 1,618 in 1997 to 4,039 in 2006.
[/quote]
The numbers show that the actual risk is miniscule. The decision is, obviously, up to individual parents.