ATV Regulation In Question

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering how closely to regulate the all-terrain vehicle industry, amid calls by concerned parents for tougher rules.

The parents insist the industry needs a wakeup call, reports consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen on The Early Show. Too many kids, they say, are being injured and killed on ATVs. This summer, more than 40 have died while using them.

The ATV industry counters that current state laws are sufficient, though ATV riders need better parental supervision, along with improved training for kids and wider use of helmets.

The CPSC has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the issue.

One of the parents pressuring the CPSC is Carol Ellert Keezer, who says she lives with a hole in her heart. Two years ago, she lost her youngest son, Alex, at what was supposed to be a fun family getaway.

"About 6 o'clock that evening, I got a phone call, and the person on the other end of the line was hysterical," Keezer told Koeppen in Keezer's Defiance, Ohio, home.

Twelve-year-old Alex had been riding an ATV in the woods. When the vehicle tipped, Alex was trapped underneath. The vehicle weighed as much as 500 pounds, Keezer says.

Alex was riding an adult-size ATV, without a helmet.

At the time, Carol thought his death was a freak accident. "I'd never heard of anyone else that was killed on an ATV before," she says.

But she soon found other mothers who had lost children, and together, they formed a group called Concerned Families for ATV Safety.

In May, the group went to Washington, D.C., to lobby the CPSC and congress for stricter safety standards. They want a federal ban on the sale of adult-size ATVs for use by children younger than 16.

"Warning labels, manuals and voluntary training courses are not preventing our children from dying," Keezer said at a news conference at the time.

The weight of the machines is what kills kids, the parents point out.

Safety advocates point to the numbers in asserting ATVs need better regulation, Koeppen notes.

Children account for nearly a third of ATV fatalities. On average, 121 children die each year. Some 36,000 go to emergency rooms after ATV accidents.But, says Tim Buche, president of the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America, an ATV trade group in Irvine, Calif., "The proper use of an ATV is key."

Buche points out his group already has a standard in place for adult-size ATVs used by kids: "There are disciplinary actions if a dealer was to be found selling adult-size ATVs for use by children."

Buche favors state, not federal, legislation when it comes to safety.

"First off," he says, "and very important, mandatory training for anyone under 16, mandatory use of helmet; mandatory supervision by adults."

Buche says it's the way people ride four-wheelers, not a lack of regulation, that leads to accidents, injuries and deaths. Parents, he says, need to make smart decisions about whether their kids are physically and mentally ready to handle an ATV.

But Keezer says she doesn't think the ATV industry is doing enough to inform parents about the dangers: "I never knew that they tipped like that. I never knew that they went that fast.

"Talk to one of us (parents)," she says. "We'll tell you what it's like to live now without your child because of an ATV accident. … It has changed my life completely. My life will never the same without Alex."

Koeppen says the CPSC is considering several proposals, including making training a requirement when you buy an ATV, and making it mandatory for dealers to provide death and injury statistics to people when they buy one.

She observes that ATVs come in several sizes.

The ones meant for adults are so big, Koeppen says, that kids have a hard time reaching all the controls. They're very heavy machines, so kids may not be able to handle vehicles that large, and they go very fast, some as fast as cars.

Smaller ATVs, the ones made for kids, have controls that are easier to reach, and parents can control the speeds so, if they only want the ATC to go five miles per hour, they can limit the vehicle's speed to that rate.