Keeping Kids Off Adult ATVs

Sue Rabe's 10-year-old son Kyle was all boy. He loved motorcycles, cars and, as CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, all terrain vehicles.

"Kyle was good at riding almost everything," says Rabes.

So good he regularly rode the family's ATV on their rural Oregon farm. But one afternoon, two years ago while riding with a friend, the Rabes got the phone call from a neighbor that every parent dreads.

The 500-pound ATV had flipped and landed on top of him.

"I just stood there and screamed blood murder and he ran down to him,'' says Sue Rabe.

"I took his helmet off and started CPR," says Kyle's father Tom. "I held him in my arms."

Finding Kyle's lifeless body on the steep hill, his parent realized they had made a terrible mistake in allowing a 10-year-old to drive an adult ATV.

Because there was no law prohibiting it, the Rabes thought it was safe.

"It would have saved our son's life if there had been a law that said he was too small to ride that," says Sue Rabe.

Only half the states have set a minimum age for riding ATVs. Nineteen of those allow 12-year-olds to ride. In Utah, the minimum age is eight. Critics want a federal law that keeps all kids younger than 16 off adult ATVs.

The average new ATV cost $4,00 which is one reason many parents ignore warning labels and buy one four wheeler for the entire family.

One retired LAPD officer who lets his children ride together on an adult ATV.

He says he's aware that what he's doing is against the warning label, but allows it because, "everyone does it."

"I know you are not supposed to let them do that,'' said the officer. "But everyone does it."

While manufacturers say the warning albels are enough, the number of children hurt on ATVs has jumped 100 percent since 1993 -- and children under 12 now account for 14 percent of all deaths on ATVs.

The ATV industry says manufacturers do everything possible to make sure children are safe -- offering pint-size ATVs just for them.

"I think the vast majority of people follow the recommended guidelines but there is always going to be a few who don't," says industry spokeswoman Sheryl Van Der Leun.

Others, like the Rabes, never thought the dealer would sell them an ATV that wasn't safe for Kyle to ride.

"He could ride like any adult but when he hit the ground he was a little boy just a small little body and a big ATV,'' said Tom Rabe, speaking at his son's graveside.