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Prepare to get your riding panties in a bunch. I have been pulling mine out all day...

If you haven't seen today's front page article in the Oregonian, it's headline is

DECEPTIVELY DANGEROUS: WHY ATV'S KEEP KILLING...

The final weekend in March dawned gray and damp across much of the country -- but eager riders pulled out their all-terrain vehicles anyway and hit the springtime trails.

Soon the ambulances rolled, too.

In North Carolina, an ATV overturned and crushed an 18-year-old woman to death. A collision with a truck killed two ATV riders in Centertown, Ky. Two girls, ages 4 and 7, died in separate ATV wrecks in eastern Texas. And two infants -- a 14-month-old in South Carolina and an 8-month-old in Perris, Calif. -- died in two more ATV crashes.

In Oregon that weekend, Debby Schubert, 45, and Donnie Moody, 31, became the state's first ATV fatalities this year when their machine tumbled into a dry canal east of Redmond.

Nine dead, including four children. Another bloody weekend in ATV country, where the quest for thrills and family fun can turn to grief in one terrifying moment.

Nearly 20 years ago, the federal government declared ATVs an "imminent hazard" and forced manufacturers to drop unstable three-wheel models in favor of the four-wheelers sold today. Regulators also compelled the ATV industry to adopt safety warnings and offer rider training to stem the accidents.

Since then, federal officials have done little more than tally the dead, and the failure of their approach can be seen in the grim body counts from Oregon to West Virginia.

The rate of injuries per ATV has barely budged from where it stood in the years after the government acted in 1988. Though death rates initially plummeted as three-wheelers disappeared, there's been scant improvement since.

Over the past decade, the machines have soared in popularity, with 7.6 million in use. The result: 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.

"This is one of the worst examples ever of a government agency failing in its fundamental mission to protect the American public," Stuart M. Statler, a former U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission member, said of the agency's inability to significantly reduce ATV deaths and injuries during the past two decades.

Statler never imagined, when he helped lead the crackdown on ATVs in the 1980s, that deaths might someday surpass 1,000. Now, nearly 8,000 people have died in ATV crashes since the commission began counting, and 2 million have been seriously hurt.

A quarter of the dead and nearly a third of the injured are children. In Oregon, at least 82 people have died on ATVs since 2000, including 22 younger than 16. Serious ATV injuries in the state have increased at almost double the national rate in recent years.

Safety risks haven't dented the allure of ATVs. Over the past decade, sales tripled to $5 billion a year as companies introduced bigger, faster models. Though companies have added new features such as four-wheel drive and power steering, they haven't eliminated a long-standing problem: overturns.

The machines flip over with punishing regularity -- smashing faces, breaking necks, crushing chests.

The major manufacturers -- Honda, Polaris, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Bombardier and Arctic Cat -- insist their machines are safe and stable if operated properly. They fault riders for accidents.

"The safety issue is with the appropriate use," William Willen, a lawyer for ATV market leader Honda, told The Oregonian. "It's how people use the machines."

Honda's safety slogan sums it up: "Stupid Hurts."

But reckless riders are only part of the problem. The federal government has not extensively tested ATV stability since at least 1991. An engineering firm hired by The Oregonian tested the stability of four popular ATV models and concluded they were dangerously prone to overturns.

The newspaper also analyzed fatal crashes (View Graphic) and reached a surprising finding: Overturns were as common among riders who appeared to be obeying basic safety warnings as among those who didn't.

Together, the results point to the role that ATV design plays in many crashes, yet regulators have largely ignored it. Meanwhile, abundant evidence shows that riders don't follow the warnings and decline free training programs, the key tenets of the government and industry approach to safety.

If only irresponsible or inexperienced riders were getting killed on ATVs, the roster of the dead might look different. Last month, a Ripon, Calif., cop and a biologist studying turtles at the Padre Island National Seashore in Texas perished in on-the-job ATV crashes.

The costs associated with ATV accidents aren't borne by victims alone. Taxpayers and employers pick up about $3 billion a year in medical expenses through government and private insurance, the consumer agency has estimated.

For parents who've lost children, the dollars pale next to the price in sorrow.

Last Mother's Day, 17-year-old Crane Mattox, an experienced rider, took his ATV out for an evening spin in the Blue Mountains near his home in Dayton, Wash. As Mattox rode up a slope, the machine flipped over backward. Searchers went out when Mattox didn't return. A cousin found him the next morning, dead under the ATV.

"If you're going to ride these things, you need to know the risks," said Mattox's mother, Dana Martin. "And the risks are death and losing your child."

The riders

On a chilly weekend last August, thousands of ATV riders flocked to the south coast near Reedsport for DuneFest, the wildest ATV party of the year at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.

Riders roared by at 60 mph, doing doughnuts and jumping over huge dunes that can soar hundreds of feet. Dozens lined up to challenge Banshee Hill, one of the biggest and steepest inclines. A man with no helmet crested the summit pulling a wheelie -- a preschooler clutching the ATV's handlebars in front.

Nearby stood a small wooden cross, where three weeks earlier a passer-by found 23-year-old Justin Miller. An expert rider from Yelm, Wash., Miller wrecked his Yamaha Raptor and suffocated under the 400-pound machine.
Since the first ATV casualty reports long ago, manufacturers have deflected questions about the design and safety of their product by pointing to reckless behavior by their customers.

Places such as the dunes, the epicenter of Northwest ATV culture, help explain why the industry's emphasis on rider responsibility and the government's reliance on warning labels haven't worked.

Few rules apply at the dunes, and disregard for ATV safety warnings is widespread.

Riders go without helmets and carry passengers. They do jumps and stunts and ride over the roughest terrain. Some drink and drive. Children commonly race around on adult-sized machines. All are behaviors that ATV owner's manuals and the Consumer Product Safety Commission warn against.

Larry Runk, a retired Oregon State Police trooper who patrols the dunes for the U.S. Forest Service, has seen it all: airborne ATVs coming down on top of other riders; adults zooming by with babies on the seat behind them; a preschooler, leg broken in a crash, sobbing as medical crews hauled away his dead father.

"If I could write a ticket for stupid," Runk said, "I'd run out of pens and paper."

Matt Gerber, a veteran rider of both ATVs and motocross bikes from Milwaukie, counts himself in the slice of the country's 16 million enthusiasts who see ATVs as a family activity and try to stick to the rules. Many invest tens of thousands of dollars in ATVs for parents and kids, not counting safety gear, trailers and other trappings of the sport.

Gerber, 37, is a stickler for safety. He limits his 11-year-old daughter to riding her youth ATV, "and I'll never let her out of my sight." But after 22 years of off-road riding, he acknowledges there's another reality.

"For at least half the riders or more, it's just an adrenaline junkie thing," he said. "It's people who want to just go at breakneck speed."

Accidents aren't limited to public recreational areas like the dunes. A growing number involve riders taking ATVs on paved roads, where traffic increases odds of a collision. Millions use them for ranching, hunting and family outings on private trails, and the casualties hit riders of all ages and experience levels.

In some cases, riders seem to be doing only what their ATV's name says: driving on all terrain.

Arnold "Leroy" Thompson, 67, of Seaside appeared to be following all the rules last October, when he and his son went out on the Thin Wolf Trail in the Tillamook State Forest. Though experienced on ATVs, Thompson was relatively new to the Arctic Cat he drove. He couldn't work up much speed on the narrow, switchback trail.

Nevertheless, the back end of Thompson's ATV pitched forward as he rode down a hill. Tony Thompson, 25, found his father lying on the ground "folded like an accordion." He was conscious but had trouble breathing and couldn't move his legs. Thompson told his son the accident happened without warning.

Minutes later, he died.

The rollovers

Federal records show that more than half of those who die on ATVs perish in crashes where the machines roll over sideways or flip forward or backward. In some cases, overturns happen after the ATV hits something or tumbles off a steep drop.

But about a third of the time, the government data show, rollovers are the first known event in a fatal crash. And as ATV companies make heavier machines, overturns pose an increasing danger. The Arctic Cat 500 that crushed Thompson, for example, is among the heavier ATVs made -- more than 600 pounds.

ATV companies are quick to point to the large number of crashes in which riders ignore warnings. That is true more than 80 percent of the time in the government's database of fatal crashes, The Oregonian's analysis found.

The warnings are posted right on the ATVs and state clearly what riders shouldn't do: drink and drive, ride without a helmet, carry a passenger or operate an adult machine if under 16. Labels also warn against riding on public roads, where traffic is a hazard, or on pavement, because ATV tires are for off-road surfaces.

But failure to comply with warnings doesn't always explain rollovers, The Oregonian found.

Working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission's crash data, the newspaper examined 2,732 fatal accidents involving four-wheel ATVs since 2000 and separated the cases into two groups: the large group of riders who ignored at least one safety warning, and the much smaller group of riders who didn't.

The newspaper then looked to see how often overturns were the primary event in the crash.

The unexpected result: Riders who followed the warnings overturned in about two out of five cases, a rate comparable to the frequency of rollovers in the group that ignored one or more warnings.

The comparison doesn't suggest that riders should ignore safety warnings. The analysis also showed, for example, that overturns are more likely in crashes where an adult-sized ATV is driven by a child under 16.

A lawyer for the industry's trade group, the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, called The Oregonian's analysis "fatally flawed," saying the industry's research over the years shows the benefits of following warnings.


The persistence of rollovers among riders who followed the basic precautions shows why engineers and safety advocates have long pointed to another factor: ATV design.

ATVs have a narrow track width and high ground clearance, necessary qualities that allow them to travel on rough territory and narrow trails. The same qualities make them far less stable than cars or SUVs.

Under pressure about rollovers, the ATV companies in 1988 signed agreements with the Consumer Product Safety Commission pledging not to build four-wheel ATVs with less sideways stability than those they sold at the time. Since 1991, the commission hasn't performed tests to check whether the companies kept their pledge.

To find out, the newspaper hired engineer Thomas R. Fries of Portland to measure the stability of four popular models. Fries has been a plaintiff's expert in ATV lawsuits and has done defense work in other vehicle crash cases.

Fries followed industry and Consumer Product Safety Commission methods. He first measured front and back stability -- called pitch stability -- and found that all four machines met the current, industry-adopted standard.

When it came to sideways, or lateral, stability, Fries found something quite different.

The commission based its lateral stability test on a machine's center of gravity, calculated using its dimensions and weight. Fries said two of the four ATVs passed that test. The other two came up just shy of the minimum lateral stability that ATV companies agreed to abide by.

But Fries said the government's test method overstates stability by 10 percent to 15 percent.

To get a more realistic result, he performed a different test. ATVs were placed on a table and tilted sideways to discover their tip angle -- the point at which their upper wheels lift off the surface. The tilt table method is better, Fries said, because it accounts for the way an ATV's suspension and tires behave.

On the tilt table test, all of the machines came in below a stability threshold Fries considered safe.

"They're dangerous," Fries said. "They are too prone to tipping over."

Fries said that small changes in ATV design -- such as widening the track width by a couple of inches and lowering the rider seating position -- would significantly increase stability. His report can be read online at www.oregonlive.com.
The ATV manufacturers don't dispute that their machines can roll or flip. Instead, they argue that ATVs are a special breed of vehicle they describe as "rider-active." In other words, it's up to drivers to keep the ATV upright by shifting their body weight from side to side or front to back.

That's why the consumer product agency warns so strongly that children younger than 16 should stay off adult-sized machines: They lack the size, strength and judgment to control a big ATV.

Overturns showed up often among 69 Oregon and Washington ATV deaths that The Oregonian documented by gathering accident reports. The deaths, spanning the past 3½ years, include 18 crashes in which overturns appear to be the first event. Six of the overturns involved children younger than 16.

With their four fat tires, ATVs look stable. But their name is misleading. ATVs can't go on all terrain, and manufacturers explicitly warn against taking them on rough, steep or unfamiliar ground.

In its safety video, Polaris offers riders this advice if an overturn seems imminent: "Be prepared to dismount quickly if necessary."

SEE THE FULL ARTICLE AT http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianatv/2007/05/deaths_...to_happen_why_a.html
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Researchers Margie Gultry, Lynne Palombo and Kathleen Blythe of The Oregonian contributed to this report.

Jeff Manning: 503-294-7606; jmanning@news.oregonian.com

We have evolved to a place in time where our government has become very proficient at control and taxation. This article is yet another example of control.

I resent the government attitude of controlling what I do as in protecting me from myself.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission does some good work but in this case they are over stepping their bounds in telling you what you can and cannot ride. The ATV's of today are as safe as they are going to get and it is, and should be, your choice as to whether or not you ride them. The USFS has an equally controlling attitude. They have long since forgotten that the public land is just that - - - public land. They also want to control you. I resent this controlling attitude.

Day 2 of a 4 day thrashing
Feds let ATVs off with a warning
Posted by Brent Walth May 13, 2007 14:24PM
Roy Deppa knows why all-terrain vehicles often maim and kill: They roll over and crush their riders.

He knew it nearly a quarter-century ago -- when he ran thousands of tests on ATVs for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. What bothers Deppa now is why it's been so hard to stop the injuries and deaths.

"You're looking at a very frustrated guy," says Deppa, an agency engineer who retired in 2005. "I've spent my career trying to make these things safer, and it seems every time I tried, someone or something stopped me."

Photo by BENJAMIN BRINK/THE OREGONIANFour-wheelers on parade: All-terrain vehicle enthusiasts show off their rides last fall at Amity's third annual ATV parade, a fundraiser for the local police department and food bank. Four-wheel ATVs are the norm these days, but the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission hasn't run a serious study of ATV stability in years. Overturns are the primary event in about a third of fatal ATV accidents, according to government crash data.
The story of how the nation's top consumer watchdog agency has failed to fix one of the ATV's most obvious hazards -- instability -- is a tale of regulatory timidity and industry clout.

Each year, ATV accidents send about 136,000 riders to emergency rooms and kill 800 more. About one of every three fatal crashes starts with the ATV overturning.

Deppa's former agency once stood up to the makers of ATVs by taking aggressive legal action to push three-wheel models off the market, a move that slashed death and injury rates.

But since then, the agency hasn't challenged the design of four-wheel ATVs. Instead, it has often bowed to the ATV manufacturers' views.

Over the past decade, ATVs have become wildly popular. More than 7 million are in use, and consumers buy about 900,000 a year. They are faster, heavier and more sophisticated, with many models featuring four-wheel drive, power steering and heavy-duty suspensions.

All those factors could affect rollovers, but Deppa says the agency hasn't done any meaningful stability testing since 1991 even though casualty counts continue to rise.

"They chose to stick their head in the dirt and essentially ignore it instead of giving it the priority that it deserved," says Leonard Goldstein, a retired commission lawyer who worked extensively on ATV issues during his 32 years at the agency. "I'm sure they were hoping against hope the numbers would improve, which they didn't."

The commission oversees 15,000 consumer products. Because of decades of belt-tightening, it does so with about half the staff it once did. Even some in the ATV industry say the agency lacks the resources it needs.

"There's too few people and too little money to do the job correctly," said Michael A. Brown, the commission's former executive director who became Honda's lead lawyer on ATV matters. "It's a scandal."

In part, it's also a matter of good intentions gone awry. Moving to more stable, four-wheel models was an improvement, but a side effect was to shift the safety debate to rider behavior and away from ATV design.

"The machines that are out there now essentially have the blessing of the agency," Deppa says. "And if you're going to bless them, you're going to have to live with the carnage."

Three-wheelers arrive
Lawn mowers, football helmets, skateboards -- these were the stuff of Deppa's early years at the consumer products agency. A Maryland native, he had first worked as a Navy engineer designing hydrofoils.

Deppa joined the agency in 1978, six years after Congress created the commission during a heady era of government intervention to police companies that made dangerous products.

Then, the agency had a reputation for swift action. But a new product -- something Honda called its "all-terrain cycle" -- puzzled agency officials. With big, puffy wheels and a minibike engine, the machines looked like oversized tricycles. By early 1984, however, growing reports of injuries and deaths had begun to trickle in.

Someone asked Deppa to look into it. He did some quick calculations and found the third wheel fooled riders into thinking the machine was stable. In reality, they had to learn to shift their weight -- often in counterintuitive ways -- to keep the ATV from pitching or rolling over sideways.

Deppa drew some squiggly sketches of a guy riding an ATV, typed up his findings and didn't think much more about it.

"About that time," he says, "the whole thing sort of blew up."

Photo by BILL PUTNAM/SPECIAL TO THE OREGONIANStability expert: Roy Deppa became one of the top experts on ATV design and stability as a longtime engineer at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Deppa developed ways to test the machines and pushed to make them less prone to rollovers.
By the fall of 1984, the commission knew of more than 80 deaths and had seen the injury rate grow fourfold in the prior two years. The agency -- overseen by commissioners appointed by the president -- summoned executives from the major ATV manufacturers to explain.

"We don't believe the product is necessarily strongly a contributor to the problem," Edward Glynn of American Honda Motor Co. told the commission that October. "We believe it's misuse."

Deppa disagreed -- but he understood why many inside his agency bought the industry's argument that riders were the problem. He had read many ATV accident reports that sounded too similar: The driver takes an impossibly steep hill, flips backward, dies. The driver doesn't wear a helmet, hits something, dies. The driver get drunk, crashes, dies.

Then one day Deppa learned of a crash that changed everything.

"Illusion of stability"
Sherry Steier got her three-wheel Yamaha ATV for Christmas in 1983. A high school freshman, she loved riding on the flat farmland near her home in Oconto, Wis.

On March 18, 1984, the 15-year-old Steier and another girl rode their ATVs across a fallow field at about 25 mph. Steier was driving in a straight line when her ATV flipped forward, fell on top of her and crushed her to death.

"They were quiet girls riding at normal speed across a flat, benign piece of ground -- benign for something called an 'all-terrain vehicle' -- and the machine still killed a girl," Deppa said. "I knew then that if you can't ride an ATV across a grassy pasture without getting killed, there must be something wrong with it."

An engineer Steier's family hired concluded a mechanical failure may have led to the accident, but Deppa still wondered how an ATV could flip so quickly and with so little warning.

The next year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission launched a full-scale inquiry into ATVs, and Deppa designed many tests with Steier's crash in mind. The tests revealed that even at slow speeds, the machine had a "bucking bronco" effect that a rider couldn't always correct. The machines could roll and flip before riders knew they were in danger.

The tests helped show the machines were especially dangerous for kids, who lacked the judgment to stay out of risky situations.

The machines got plenty of bad publicity -- newspaper stories and congressional hearings pointed out their hazards. By December 1986, when the agency knew of 600 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries, commissioners moved to get the industry to buy back three-wheel ATVs and four-wheelers purchased for use by children under 16.

In federal court, the agency later declared that ATVs presented an "imminent and unreasonable risk of death and severe personal injury" and that manufacturers deceptively promoted an "illusion of stability."

It was an unprecedented action that confronted the major ATV companies -- Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Polaris -- with the prospect of shelling out $1 billion to repurchase their machines from consumers.

Within a year, the get-tough posture softened.

Under a settlement with the agency and Justice Department, the companies agreed to voluntary regulation. They would promote safety training, label all new ATVs with warnings about the risk of death or injury if riders didn't operate them properly, and ensure that their machines met some basic design standards.

The biggest change: The companies would stop selling three-wheel ATVs.

The deal, called a consent decree, looked like a major victory for the commission. But the commission didn't require the companies to buy back three-wheelers. The agency's database shows that at least 821 people have died riding them since 1989.

Nor was the deal much of a sacrifice for the ATV companies. Three-wheel ATVs accounted for only 6 percent of sales by that time. The companies had all but abandoned them in favor of four-wheel models.

Everyone agreed four-wheel machines were more stable. But as Deppa and co-workers believed, that didn't necessarily mean they were safe.

Finding the tipping point
At the commission, Deppa had helped develop a way to learn just how prone an ATV is to roll over. It involved measuring and weighing the machine to find its center of gravity and tipping points. Testers also put ATVs on a platform and tilted them to find the angle at which the uphill wheels lifted off.

The ATV industry accepted the commission's method for measuring pitch stability -- the tendency of the machine to flip forward or backward. But when it came to lateral -- or side -- stability, the companies fought.

They argued that a measurement taken when the machine was sitting still had little meaning. ATVs were "rider-active," the companies said, requiring users to shift their weight to the front, back and side to stay upright.

Industry engineers said the rider's abilities, the machine's dynamics, the terrain -- even the kind of dirt under the wheels -- all made a difference.

"(The commission) was looking for simplistic things," said David Weir of Dynamic Research Inc., a longtime consultant to the ATV industry. "I don't think the simplistic answer was there at the time."

In 1988, the ATV companies agreed they would never make vehicles with less lateral stability than those then on the market. The companies also pledged to work on developing a lateral stability standard -- but after another 18 months, the agency found the industry efforts inadequate and the two sides never reached agreement.

Deppa's agency struggled on another front: proving stability mattered. Before the safety commission could order design changes in a product, the law required it to prove there would be a measurable effect on deaths and injuries.

He and others suspected a more stable ATV might save lives, but they didn't know how many. One? A dozen? A thousand? The commission's own studies couldn't provide an answer.

Deppa had pressed hard for a tougher standard. In frustration, he decided to go public and agreed to appear at a Senate hearing in July 1990 about ATVs.

Deppa testified that the ATV companies promised to work on improving stability standards but "failed to make any meaningful effort to fulfill that promise."

For a midlevel engineer inside the commission, Deppa's appearance was extraordinary. But Congress never acted.

No dramatic effect
Did the consumer commission's steps make a difference with ATVs?

The agency's records show that the risk of injury or death on an ATV has plummeted from the mid-1980s peaks. But the declines coincided with the disappearance of three-wheel ATVs -- and that was happening before the companies signed the consent decrees.

In recent years, death and injury rates per ATV have been effectively flat -- suggesting that safety warnings and training have had no dramatic effect on the hazards posed by four-wheel ATVs.

What did change was the commission's diligence.

The agency had required all ATVs to carry warning labels that told riders -- among other things -- to always wear helmets, avoid carrying passengers and never drink and drive.

The agency keeps a database of fatal ATV wrecks and is supposed to record key information in each case, including whether the rider followed the warnings. The purpose is to help spot meaningful trends.

But The Oregonian found that the commission's database contains huge gaps when it comes to the warnings. From 1993 to 1998, the agency failed to record whether riders followed some warnings in more than 1,300 fatal crashes.

Today, a spokesman says the agency collected reports on fatal crashes but never recorded the information in its database so it could be studied. Nor has the commission performed tests since 1991 to see whether the companies are living up to agreements on lateral stability, a spokesman confirmed.

The consent decrees with ATV companies expired in 1998. During the 10 years they were in effect, ATV accidents injured 500,000 people and killed about 2,200 more -- including 700 children.

As the expiration date neared, ATV sales accelerated -- and so did deaths and injuries. The commission staff considered taking new action. But it found there was little it could do.

"The problem was we had put conditions on the four-wheel ATVs, and the industry was meeting those conditions, such as they were," said Pamela Gilbert, the commission's executive director during the Clinton administration.

"ATVs had become part of the economy and people's lifestyles. It left us with almost nowhere to go short of trying again to ban them."

Agency lawyers predicted an expensive legal fight, Gilbert said, with victory far from certain. So the commission backed away: The companies signed letters agreeing to voluntarily extend most terms in the consent decrees.

Still, Deppa said he was asked to design a new study of ATV mechanics and stability.

He proposed a "cursory" review of the latest ATVs on a bare-bones budget of about $40,000.

"It got turned down," Deppa said. "I was told it cost too much."

Testing plans shelved
The Consumer Product Safety Commission would be doing nothing about ATV safety today if not for what happened under the chairmanship of Harold D. Stratton.

Stratton was a former New Mexico attorney general who helped run a presidential election committee for George W. Bush in 2000. The next year, the president named him commission chairman.

Stratton at first didn't want the job, and he arrived as pressure built for action on ATVs. The machines had been getting bigger, faster and heavier for years. And the commission found risk increasing as engine size grew.

By 2002, the Consumer Federation of America led eight other groups to petition the commission to ban sales of adult-size ATVs for use by children under 16.

Stratton agreed to hearings on ATVs but was reluctant to act. On Capitol Hill in 2003, he testified that much of the ATV safety problem was with riders. "We don't regulate behavior," Stratton said. "We regulate dangerous, hazardous products."

But by June 2005, Stratton surprised the agency's staff by telling them to review ATV rules and see whether new ones were needed.

The commission's staff is supposed to investigate and study regulations based on unbiased research and without political pressure.

But concerns about political pressure soon arose.

In March 2006, a directive came down from the executive director's office spelling out what the agency's new ATV regulatory approach should include.

The staff had considered a plan for testing ATVs, but the directive left it out.

Stratton declined to discuss the directive with The Oregonian. "I wasn't at that meeting," he said, "but that's not the kind of thing I would have attended."

Last July, The Oregonian filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the meeting. The commission denied the request, and the newspaper has appealed.

The existence of the directive would still be secret today if not for one of the agency's commissioners, Thomas H. Moore, a Clinton appointee who has served since 1995.

Moore declined to be interviewed for this article. But last July, he released a public statement describing the meeting and pressure from the agency's top management and what he termed the "March directive."

"It appeared that engineering and other research, such as had been done to get the three-wheeled ATVs off the market, would be done to find out what mechanical features of the four-wheelers (if any) were contributing to the deaths and injuries," Moore wrote.

Instead, he said, plans for testing ATVs "were shelved."

Stratton left the agency a week later to work for a Washington law firm, but Moore and Nancy Nord, another Bush appointee on the commission, directed the staff to look deeper into the stability issue.

Today, commission officials decline to discuss specifics. But documents show the agency is again investigating why ATVs are dangerous for children, and it plans to test youth-sized ATVs.

With Stratton's departure, the commission lacks a quorum, leaving it unable to act.

In February, President Bush nominated Stratton's replacement: Michael Baroody, an executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade and lobbying group that has frequently favored limiting the commission's power.

"Over to the dark side"
Roy Deppa retired from the commission in September 2005 and with a partner now runs a consulting firm that advises companies on product safety.

One of their first big clients: the ATV industry.

He and his partner recently produced a report describing shoddy workmanship and safety problems of ATVs from China that don't meet the current, voluntary ATV industry standards.

The industry is using their report to argue for making the standards mandatory, a move that would help protect the U.S. market for the major companies, which already comply.

Deppa says he has few qualms about doing work for the very industry he battled for so many years.

"I know a lot of people back at the agency think I've gone over to the dark side," Deppa says. "I see this as work aimed at trying to make ATVs safer."

Deppa lives on a sheep farm outside Washington, D.C. An ATV might come in handy there, he said, but it hasn't crossed his mind to drive one.

"If I owned an ATV, I'd have trouble ever letting anyone ride it," Deppa said. "They're just too dangerous."


Susan Goldsmith of The Oregonian staff contributed to this story.

Read on:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianatv/2007/05/a_loss_...ever_saw_coming.html

A senseless tragedy.

quote:

Originally posted by Cexplorergal:
Read on:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianatv/2007/05/a_loss_...ever_saw_coming.html

A senseless tragedy.

These kinds of sob stories make my mad! It is "do gooder" liberalism at it's ugly best. Yes, it is a tragedy for that family but all three of the accidents that happened to this same family were preventable. They chose to use bad judgment in each incident. Finally, in doing so it resulted in the death of a young girl. The ATV did not kill that girl, bad judgment did.

I am not responsible for other peoples lack of judgment and should not be restricted, corralled or punished in any way for what they did. It is not, and should not be, the government that takes responsibility for peoples personal actions and they sure as hell need not restrict all for the actions of a few.

It is evident that this reporter, Jeff Manning, has selected the ATV sport as his vehicle to recognition in his career.
It was too easy. Take a sport that has not become so large to have attracted the attention of other investigative journalists, and make it your own project. Assemble statistics to make it appear that your assertions that hese vehicles are dangerous, seem true. (How many bicycle deaths were there nationwide in the same time period Manning states here were 9 ATV deaths nationwide? Nobody asks.)
Tell stories to tug at the heartstrings and include photographs of attractive children, preferrably holding puppies. No fat kids or funny looking dweebs. Only sweet looking doe eyed all-American children. Tell patently ridiculous stories like, "The ATV was travelling straight ahead on a flat field and suddenly flipped forward, killing its rider"

And keep saying the same thing many times. Joseph Goebbles said, "Lies, repeated often enough, appear as the truth"

And maybe you too can be the new Ralph Nader and make your mark by spreading lies about the supposed safety hazards of a vehicle. Work the readership into a lather of indignation over these allegations.
And then maybe you will be promoted and get a bigger salary at the newspaper, or even get to write a reveal-all book. And then maybe you can run for office, based on your consumer advocacy history.

Nader campaigned against the Chevrolet Corvair, a radically different design of car for American manufacturers utilizing an all aluminum flat opposed six cylinder rear engine. The car was so neutral handling with its swing axle suspension that driving schools used it to teach new drivers how to control skids, but Nader was so successful at spreading disinformation about Corvair's 'evil handling', even to writing a book called 'Unsafe at Any Speed' that after nine years, GM halted production and killed the division. Thanks Ralph.

Ralph's book killed a whole division of GM when they closed the Corvair works after 9 years of productionin 1969, because despite the fact that Ralph made up all of his claims, enough people believed it that the truth became irrelevant. The damage was done.
Ralph Nader cemented his position as self-appointed consumer advocate by this campaign. It did his pocketbook no eend of good and gave him a job, but robbed America of a big head start in the compact car field, which would soon explode to the benefit of offshore car makers. American car makers were scared away from making anything other than iron block front engine conventionally suspensioned cars for the next 20 years.

*Pay attention*
People who want to continue to ride ATVs had better pay attention and shut this Jeff Manning down as soon as possible, because his career move just might cause at least as much damage to ATVing as Nader's did to the Corvair, and we are in a lot more litigous and safety driven time than these matters counted in the late '60's!

It's people who have to do it, because anything the manufacturers say in their own defence just sounds like self serving damage control.

It's ATV owners and riders who have to battle this misinformation with REAL facts, and make this fear mongering career-boy realize that he has made a terrible mistake.

I totally agree with what both of you are saying. It is really sad that opportunistic "so-called" journalists exploit one family's sensless tragedy for the sake of selling papers and shame on those who feed off of this.

It seems like this guy pointed his bony little fingers every other direction except to lack of supervision and carelessness.
Is our society so sick as to cocoonize each of us so as to protect us from ourselves?

Sadly Cexplorergal I think we are headed in the direction of the government doing everything it can to protect us from ourselves.


glenlivet~ your post got me so fired up I sent this J. Manning do gooder an email. His email address can be found in the link to the story. Your post was an inspiration. I hope it inspires others to do the same and shut this guy up. With the mention of Ralph Nadar by you I realized OMG, this could actually happen to ATVs as well.

Here is what I wrote:


As an avid, responsible, ATV rider I am appalled at your story using the death of a young girl to further your misguided, uninformed agenda. I have been on the seat of ATV starting with a Suzuki 250, then Suzuki 500 and lastly a Suzuki KingQuad700 with IRS and fuel injection. With age I gave up dirt bikes for four wheels, as in quads. Since owning my quads I have traveled 10,000 plus miles on trails all over the West and have been able to enjoy all the beauty Mother Nature has to offer. I could not have walked to these remote, beautiful places. I rode my quad - - - responsibly.

I know that this great sport, as in all sports, can cause injury or even death if you do not use good judgement. Everything in life requires good judgment. I certainly do not need the government to regulate my behavior or you attempting to sway the government and the public with what can be described as a "sob story" to regulate my behavior either. Oh, there is always a picture of a doe eyed sister or friend who were left behind with the death and pictures of the deceased holding puppies and opening Christmas packages. All designed to tug at the heart strings and fear monger the public.

The death of this young girl is tragic for the family. A family that on three occasions due to their own BAD JUDGMENT were hurt and then suffered the death of a young girl. The ATV did not cause the death, BAD JUDGMENT did. You can not legislate or regulate parental responsibility, common sense and good/bad judgment.

Your article begs the question "how many people are killed on bicycles each year, or walking across the street"? Need something to do? Check those out.
I have to wonder if you might be a Ralph Nadar wanna be but with ATVs rather than the automobile industry as in Americas first compact car, the Corvair. There is money to be made in rallying the people behind a cause even if real facts go out the window and lies prevail. Careers can be created through these "investigative" slanted, bogus agendas. Is that where you are Mr. Manning?

Annie

Here is what I wrote. Lets bombard him.
Mr. Manning, I just finished reading with total amazement your recent article. It is to say the least a very interesting read, although it is shot full with holes.

Yes it is a tragedy that a young girl died, although your irresponsible reporting is also quite tragic in itself.

First three girls under the age of sixteen were riding a machine that is well documented with decals warning they are not to be operated by people under the age of sixteen. Where was the adult supervision? Next three girls were riding three up on a machine designed for one person only. Again documented by decal warning labels. This in itself would cause the suspension, steering and braking to not function as it is designed to function . Next they were riding on a gravel road. My question was this a county road and was it legal for them to be riding there? Were they all three wearing the proper safety gear such as a helmet?
This was clearly an accident waiting to happen as a result of poor judgement.

Next you wrote about the fathers accident. "Inching along in the dark" his front tire dropped off in a rut. Well imagine that. Driving in the dark. Could we expect something different if it were a car, motorcycle or a bicycle? Would you drive a vehicle in the dark?

Next you wrote about the Grandfathers accident. He was driving through four foot tall grass when his ATV nose dived into a washout. I would venture to say that driving through four foot tall grass he could have ran into a bull dozer without seeing it.What was he thinking?

I would guess that if you presented these exact same three scenerios to these people before they had thier accidents they would all say the same thing. Wow these are three accidents just waiting to happen.

Mr. Manning, how can you throw blame on an ATV for accidents that were clearly set in place by poor judgement on behalf of the operators?

As the makers of Honda say "STUPID HURTS"

Mr. Manning, I have been riding ATV's for several years. I have owned machines all the way from a 300 cc up to the Kawasaki Brute Force 750. I have logged several thousand miles and hours of responsible riding with nothing worse then a black eye.
I have witnessed a few accidents. Two were caused by lack of attention of the operator, which both resulted in broken collar bones. The rest of the accidents I have witnessed were clearly the result of poor judgement. For instance the three people (father, mother and daughter) I came up on that had been riding three up on a machine built for one person. They were going up a hill clearly marked expert riders only. (It was the first time they had ever rode an ATV). The father (operator) had been drinking and not one of them were wearing safety gear. Well I bet you can figure out what happened next. Luck would have it that none of three received serious injuries.

Please look at the total story when reporting and not just the point you may want to make. As always every accident has a cause, and the first cause is most likely the operator and poor judgement.

Maybe this article should be renamed: An Accident In The Making. Or: Why Could They Not See This Coming?

Mr. Manning, do you have the integrity to put some of the many letters that I am sure you will receive in the same medium that you chose to report your one sided story?

Ed Fulton
Mount Ida, ArkansasFounding Member Arkansas Trail Voyagers
Member Blue Ribbon Coalition
Arkansas Associate State Rep NOHVCC

Good stuff people, but I have an idea that Emailing Mr. Manning himself only permits him total control of where the eMail that contradicts his stance goes, and I am sure that given his agenda, the letters of outrage will go into his trash folder quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.
Unread by anyone else, including the editor.

What is needed is somewhere that the reading public can appreciate that the fantasy stories presently carried in the Oregonian are based on deceptions, and are slanted to misdirect the public's outrage.

Hoping that Manning will suddenly do an about face following his stinging three part indictment of ATVs is about as likely as Nader writing that maybe he was wrong and that he got letters from happy Corvair owners.
When hell freezes over.

Does the Oregonian have a rival publication, whoi would like to see them with egg on their faces?

IMHO there is no question this reporter grandized this tragic situation for his own benefit, and to sell papers! As far as the investigation--all that can be said is "life is dangerous". This isn't to suggest that situations cannot be avoided, and that adults that know better must have the fortitude to try to keep youngsters from harms way, but to promote the idea that its all the fault of the machine and those who designed and use them is bunk.

A study of the use of our friend the horse would show a incredible amount of injuries. Just over the past weekend, a experienced buckeroo suffered a broken pelvis from a horse, in fact I can bring to memory five people in the past four or five years that have had broken pelivses. I have suffered broken ribs, a broken shoulder, and many bruises and scrapes from them. One of my best friends was killed in a horse race. Some of the situations have similiarities with ATV mishaps, inexperience, and poor judgement play key roles in both cases.

Not that my heart goes out to the families for their loss-the loss of a child is something some never deal with, but even that is-for lack of better words-the luck of the draw.

I love you guys
I missed it, but a friend and our biggest fighter here in Oregon "Linda Minton" had a face to face with this guy yesterday. It will be interesting to see what if anything she had to say ends up in the paper.
BTW we are working on a rider fit,ATV,safety training program here in Oregon, yesterday we climbed over the second to last hurdle. Now all we have to do is get some wording corrected for the rental people and it will all go for a final vote. This will all happen before the end of the month. I know Utah and some other states are following our progress. I also hope that the Feds. are paying attention and will not try to shut down kids on ATV's all together.
Thanks again. Terry

Here is thew communication between Mr. Manning and myself. I was quite suprised to get any response at all.

His response to me.

Ed,
Thanks for taking the time to write. I appreciate hearing your views.
Yes, the three girls did violate several safety rules that day. And
they paid a harsh price.
You're correct, that in a huge percentage of these cases, the victims
were violating some safety rule. We were careful to mention the safety
violations in every case that we knew the details.
That doesn't mean they should be dismissed as idiots who had it coming.
Eight-thousand dead and nearly 2 million injured. That's a lot of
idiots.
Sincerely,
Jeff

My response to him

Jeff, I did not dismiss them as idiots that had it coming. Although they contributed more towards tha accdent then the ATV did by far. Blaming the ATV is like blaming a pecil for writing a letter. It takes the function of the human being. Yes you were sure to point out the unsafe acts of the operator.
"Inching along in the dark" Give me a break, this was a well thought out and crafted statement in which you are trying to make the operator look as if he were in the right. If he was just inching then why did he not just walk?
Jeff, have you ever been on an ATV? Do you really know both sides of the story?
Again, I ask if they were in a car, on a motorcycle or a bicycle do you think they would have commited the acts that resulted in these accidents.
Would you give your keys for your car to your underage child and say here take your sister and cousin and go have a good time? I really doubt that you would be so foolish.
ATV's are an exciting form of entertainment and fun, although they are still a peice of equipment and not a toy to send the kids out on unsupervised.
Driving through four foot tall grass is also a little on the reckless side wouldn't you think?

His last response to me.

Ed,
I have ridden ATVs. Not a lot. But I have been through Honda's training
course. They are a gas. I can understand their popularity.
Jeff

This article in the Oregonian, and I grew up in Vancouver, Washington reading this liberal rag, is the most ludicrous reporting I have seen in a long time. These statistics and anecdotal evidence are nothing more than another attempt to legislate human behaviour. I agree with you Annie regarding liberal governments need to control our lives from cradle to grave. Who needs them. What a bunch of phony loons who couldn't tie their shoes without instructions. Here are some real facts: Death from unintentional injuries were 109,277 in the latest year for which statistics were released. The following numbers by type of accident are rounded off for brevities sake. Auto accidents killed 43,000 people. Falls, yes FALLS killed 13,000 people. Poisons and other noxious substances accounted for 13,000 deaths. Drownings--3800. Fires--3400. Medical complications 3000. The best guess for medical deaths from wrong prescriptions and operating room mistakes is estimated to be closer to 140,000 people every year. Unspecified non transportation accidents accounted for 17,000 deaths. Other land transportation accounted for 1500 deaths. Fire arms accidents accounted for 776 deaths. Of the total number of people who died during this particular year, 4.4% were accidental.
Statistics don't lie, but liers use statistics. 800 deaths from the 12 or 15 million people who ride quads, even though each one is a tragedy, pales in comparison to the numerous other ways people end up in a box. More people choke to death than die riding quads. Are we going to prohibit people from eating? How about swimming, or walking down stairs, are these going to also become illegal? When are we going to outlaw the medical profession because these human beings make mistakes?
Seems to me that the idiots on the left always want to blame something for human frailties. It is always the instrument that plays the tune and not the human being. Why are they so concerned about atv's and yet so oblivious to the realities of, oh, terrorists who want to do us all in? It is hard to get up every morning knowing you are going to be bombarded with another day of lunacy from the likes of the screwballs that work for the Oregonian which was once a very good newspaper. This incessant indoctrination from the left is wearing heavy on a very large proportion of the population, and one day the ballot box will be empty for those who purport to know more than I about how to live and enjoy my life.