CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Moms Organize to Prohibit ATV Use by Children
19 Corporate Crime Reporter 20(1), May 11, 2005
A group of mothers whose young children died while riding all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) came to Washington, D.C. today to pressure the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to prohibit the sale of ATVs for use by children under the age of 16.
Standing at a podium at the National Press Club in front of pictures of their
children, five moms told their stories of how their children were killed on
ATVs.
The moms have created a public interest group – Concerned Families for
ATV Safety – to educate the public about the dangers of ATVs and to push
for a federal safety standard.
“We are here to bring awareness to other parents involving the use of
ATVs and children under 16 years old,” said Sue DeLoretto-Rabe of Turner,
Oregon, who lost her 10-year-old son Kyle three years ago.
“Our goal is to keep children under 16 from dying on adult-size ATVs,”
she said.
“Unfortunately, we have all experienced first hand how deadly these machines can be to children," she said. "In the past three years, we have each lost a child from an ATV accident and there are thousands more just like us.”
“If I had known then what I know now, that close to 2,000 kids under the
age of 16 have died on these motorized vehicles and many, many more have suffered
serious trauma, I would have warned my son never to ride one,” said Carolyn
Anderson of Brockton, Massachusetts, who lost her 14-year-old son James last
summer. “I warned him about unprotected sex, about drinking and driving,
and about drugs. I never warned him about ATVs.”
Anderson said that her 12-year old son, James, “had never driven anything
but a bicycle before that weekend.”
“It’s unacceptable that the billion dollar ATV industry is in charge
of ATV safety,” Anderson said. “Can the liquor industry say –
we recommend 12 year olds not drink whiskey, we’ve put stickers on the
bottles but, it’s up to the parents? Can the auto industry say –
we recommend that your eight-year-old not drive your sports car, we’ve
put warning stickers on the cars, but – we’re opposed to regulating
sports car sales to eight year olds? Would society find that acceptable?”
Anderson said that the “voluntary approach to ATV safety agreed on between
the CPSC and the ATV industry is a big failure.”
“Kids are dying, lots of kids,” she said.
Industry representatives sat silently at the back of the room at the press conference
as the mothers told their stories.
DeLoretto-Rabe recognized the presence of the industry representatives in the
room and then warned that “the industry either needs to make it impossible
for a child to ride an adult size ATV, or we need to make laws so they can’t.”
“Most people will follow laws, knowing there is a good reason behind them,
and consequences to go along with them,” she said. “If the industry
is truly being honest and they want the same end result as we do, they should
be behind us in finding ways to stop children from dying on adult size ATVs.
It shouldn’t have to take thousands of dead and injured children to prove
a point. One child is one too many.”
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA), which helped organize the mothers,
has had a petition pending before the CPSC for more than 30 months.
The petition seeks a national standard barring the sale of adult-size ATVs for
use by children under the age of 16.
But CPSC has failed to act on that petition.
The staff of the CPSC recommended earlier this year that the CPSC not develop
any national standard.
Anderson said that the families would meet with the Commissioners Hal Stratton
and Thomas Moore later today to demand action on the petition.
CPSC spokesperson Scott Wolfson said that the goal is to get a vote on the CFA
petition sometime this year.
Wolfson said that the staff recommended that the CPSC reject the petition because
there was the feeling that “we do not regulate behavior.”
What behavior is that?
“That behavior is the parent buying an adult sized ATV for the household
and in the end someone under 16 ends up riding it,” he said.
“It already is part of a voluntary agreement,” said Wolfson.
Corporate Crime Reporter
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