Putting the Brakes on Off-Road Cycle Use : Medical Groups, Regulatory Agencies Hit Manufacturers--and Each Other

Three major national medical organizations have joined a politically charged public health controversy over the safety of off-road motorcycles.

The dispute focuses not just on the vehicles’ safety but on federal officials’ alleged failure to regulate them--a growing brouhaha replete with inter-agency investigations and allegations.

The crux is whether such vehicles can be safely operated or designed. This latest wave of controversy is developing against a backdrop of exponential increases in sales and popularity of all-terrain vehicles, which have become heavily used since about 1983. Two types are in question--those with three and four wheels--with the tricycle variety attracting by far the most concern.

The plot has thickened considerably just since the beginning of last week:

- The American Academy of Pediatrics, at its annual meeting in Washington, excoriated the Consumer Product Safety Commission for neither imposing a recall of all three-wheeled ATVs nor banning future production of such vehicles.

- The academy also urged manufacturers to agree to a voluntary moratorium on sales of ATVs until their safety engineering can be improved. Existing ATVs, the academy contended, should be operated only in daylight, never on unfamiliar terrain, never with passengers other than the driver, always with the driver wearing a crash helmet and never by anyone under 14.

- The General Accounting Office, the watchdog investigative arm of Congress, said it had begun an inquiry into possible “undue influence” by President Reagan’s appointees to the Consumer Product Safety Commission on a commission task force. The task force in September issued a series of comparatively weak recommendations calling for greater public education on the dangers of ATVs and more warning labels on the vehicles themselves. The task force also urged voluntary removal from the market of small versions of such vehicles intended for use by children under 12.

- The GAO produced still another report that attempted to make sense of attempts by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to release a study that concluded ATVs are no more hazardous than small off-road minibike motorcycles and snowmobiles--a formal finding that would have been in concert with manufacturers’ contentions. But the GAO concluded the report--whose release was eventually held up--was based on unscientific subjective conclusions by a handful of ATV dealers.

- An influential medical journal, the Annals of Emergency Medicine, published back-to-back articles in its November issue--one based on a detailed study of 169 all-terrain vehicle accidents, including two fatalities, near Palm Springs--that raise still more questions about safety of the three-wheelers.

The study from Desert Hospital in Palm Springs suggests engineering modifications that would probably be impossible to incorporate into existing ATV designs, according to the doctor who headed the research. A second study, from northern Minnesota, brands injuries caused by ATVs an “unrecognized epidemic” and urges tough state laws mandating a minimum age (14) for driving ATVs, safety training, use of crash helmets and outlawing driving ATVs after drinking.

These new developments have underscored the tripartite role of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians in the ATV controversy. Within the last few weeks, the emergency physicians have urged states to enact ATV safety laws and the family practitioners have called for study of an outright ban on the vehicles or at least a limitation on their use to adults only.

Safety Defended

Manufacturers steadfastly defend the safety of their products, and say they have no plans to pull ATVs from the market.

Between 1980 and 1984, sales of ATVs rose from 180,000 a year to 650,000 with estimates that total sales in 1985 amounted to 1.85 million. The vehicles were first sold for use in agriculture but today are most often employed recreationally in rough terrain. Government accident data link ATVs to 85,900 injuries a year at current rates and 559 deaths in the last five years--a third of which were children.

In a dry river bed outside Palm Springs, the controversy struck a familiar note with ATV enthusiasts themselves who agreed some action is necessary. Jim Veneglia, 26, Phil Clark, 26, and Paul Bright, 24, had spent the day on the sand dunes riding both three- and four-wheel ATVs. They agreed with a cross-section of motor vehicle engineering experts interviewed by The Times that the three-wheel variety is far less stable than its four-wheeled cousin but insisted that, with proper training, and avoidance of alcohol, the three-wheel variety is safe.

But to Dr. George Trager, an emergency physician who headed the Palm Springs study, the feelings of the three riders may be precisely the crux of the issue. Users of ATVs, Trager contended in an interview, have established that relying on common sense and voluntary use of safety equipment is not enough to prevent injuries and deaths.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Unlike highway vehicles that are monitored by police officers, ATVs are generally operated where police agencies maintain little or no presence, Trager argued. Trager said he concluded reluctantly that three-wheel ATVs, at least, have got to go.

The Palm Springs study, focusing on 169 ATV victims treated from Jan. 1, 1984 to June 30, 1985, found that most victims were 16 to 25, but with some as young as 3. Most serious injuries were to the chest and shoulders, with 76% of the victims male, 30% hospitalized, 23% children under 16 and 31% of a subgroup of 55 patients testing positive for alcohol use. One ATV driver registered four times the blood-alcohol level necessary for conviction on drunk-driving charges.

Only two of 13 patients who had head injuries were wearing helmets. The most common cause of accidents was inexperience that resulted in drivers putting their feet on the ground to stop or turn--an instinct left over from two-wheel motorcycle riding. In the case of ATVs, though, if the rider puts his foot on the ground, a rear driving wheel will likely run up the back of his leg, flipping both vehicle and person to the ground.

The three riders agreed the mistake is a common one, even among experienced riders. “I would say it happens hourly,” Clark said. Trager said that, among circumstances that led to crashes, the Palm Springs study found 16% of victims crashed the first time they rode an ATV and 10 victims had serious accidents in the first hour of riding.

While most of the crashes involved falling off the ATV or rolling it over, 21 victims said they hit another vehicle and 10 said they hit a stationary object--including one man who ran into a bridge abutment and another victim who swerved his ATV while riding along railroad tracks and crashed into a parked train. Accidents or not, though, 60% of the victims said they’d ride ATVs again after they got out of the hospital.

The report also concluded--surprisingly, Trager said--that ATV crashes near Palm Springs have only a slightly higher rate of occurrence than serious skiing accidents. Trager noted, too, that there was no way to compare the severity of ATV and skiing injuries.

The Palm Springs study was generally in concert with a second report conducted in Aitkin, Minn., of 54 cases, finding that ATV injuries differ significantly from motorcycle crash injuries, and concluding that harsh new state laws are necessary. At least three earlier research reports, from Alaska, Alabama and Wisconsin, drew similar conclusions.

“I’m sure the technology (exists) for manufacture of a safe ATV,” said Dr. Bruce Adams, who headed the Minnesota study. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath (waiting for safer designs to be sold).

“This (the safety issue) has been sort of forgotten, but . . . there is an awareness on the part of the physicians who care for these kids that these things (ATVs) are really dangerous.”

Extra Level of Danger

Because of the extra level of danger of ATVs for children, the American Academy of Pediatrics, so far, has taken the strongest position of any medical group involved. Dr. Joseph Greenshar, chairman of the committee that drew up the academy statement, noted that, in 1985, the group asked vehicle makers to voluntarily curtail sales of new ATVs until the machines could be redesigned so they were not as lethal--especially to children under 14.

“What we had to come out with (now),” Greenshar said in a telephone interview from the academy’s convention in Washington, “is a much stronger official policy that says, ‘Fix this thing or get it off the market.’

“What we would like to see is the small models (short frames and engines of 50 to 70 cc displacement marketed for use by children) removed from use by anyone under 12. (But) if they are bad enough to stop selling them, they are bad enough to stop using (ordering existing ones off the road) them, too.”

Manufacturers are resistant. A spokesman for American Honda Motor Co., the biggest maker of ATVs, said the company has no plans to curtail its sales of three- and four-wheel ATVs. Honda said it believes its ATVs are “absolutely” safe.

Through an attorney, Yamaha International Corp., the second largest ATV maker, said Yamaha continues to believe the three-wheel ATVs are safe and that the company is not persuaded by arguments to the contrary. Yamaha said the continued availability of its ATVs on the market “has not been determined yet.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which in late September released a task force report that included 12,000 pages of technical data, has so far not taken formal action on ATV safety. The report’s tentative recommendations were to have been acted on last month, but the meeting was canceled and rescheduled for Nov. 19, according to Nick Marchica, chairman of the task force and a commission official, who said there had been no attempt by any Reagan appointee to influence the inquiry. Marchica said the commission is precluded from ordering a product off the market until all attempts to gain voluntary compliance have failed.

The safety commission has been a lead agency in implementing the Reagan Administration philosophy of encouraging cooperation between regulatory agencies and the industries they oversee. Critics--including a variety of congressional committees--have charged the commission has ignored public health and safety issues in the ATV controversy because it is politically committed to cooperating with manufacturers. It is a charge Marchica contended is groundless.

But the House Government Operations Committee apparently thinks otherwise. It has repeatedly asked the GAO to investigate the safety commission’s ATV activities. The most recent demand for an investigation came after the task force committee’s report was made public.

Last July, in a report that attracted little public attention, the committee concluded that ATVs present “both an unreasonable and an imminent risk of death and serious injury requiring immediate enforcement action by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.” But the committee complained that the commission’s actions “have not yet and will not soon result” in appropriate action.

Stuart Statler, an ex-member of the commission--appointed by former President Jimmy Carter--charged that the ATV safety controversy is perhaps the worst example he has encountered of “cooperation” between regulators and a regulated industry.

“This is a very blind adherence to a political doctrine, notwithstanding some very, very alarming facts,” Statler contended. “In all my years with the commission, I never saw anything--at least in the case of the three-wheel ATVs--that approached such a known hazard.

“Just think if a drug came out that had killed that many people. What would the government do?”