Alcohol, High Speed Turn Snowmobiles Into Death Traps

Trooper Robert Mayra will never forget the scene: the mangled snowmobile that had rammed a concrete bridge abutment at 75 m.p.h., the broken bodies of the two young riders.

“These kids, they just feel they’re invincible . . . and all of a sudden, bang, it’s over,” Mayra said.

On Jan. 30, the teen-age victims and another couple left a party for a moonlight spin on the trails. Investigators said the driver of the doomed machine lost control trying to pass the other. State Police lab tests showed he had been drinking.

Alcohol and high speed, a deadly combination in countless highway crashes, are leading culprits in a rising tide of tragedy on snowmobile trails.

No federal agency keeps a national count of snowmobiling fatalities. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says 11,943 people were hurt in snowmobiling accidents in 1992, the latest numbers available. The total increased 22% in three years, the agency said.

In Michigan, which leads the nation in registered snowmobiles with more than 200,000, the death toll has risen steadily--from 11 in 1989-90 to 26 last winter. Halfway through this season, at least 14 have died.

Wisconsin’s annual death rate nearly tripled in a decade and hit 22 last winter.

Nearly two-thirds of the Michigan deaths in the past three years involved alcohol, said Bruce Gustafson, recreation supervisor in the Law Enforcement Division of the state Department of Natural Resources.

They are a legacy of a bar-hopping tradition that began with snowmobiling’s emergence as popular recreation in the 1960s, when the typical machine lumbered along crude forest trails at 25 m.p.h. Many of today’s sleek, powerful models exceed 100 m.p.h. and accelerate quicker than a sports car on smooth, hard trails.

“New technology--both in the machines and the grooming of trails--has resulted in a sport that has changed considerably from the way it started out,” said Capt. Curt Bacon, chief DNR law enforcement officer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

The drunken snowmobiler is a sensitive matter in Upper Midwestern states, where the sport has become a pillar of the tourist economy.

Dozens of towns across the region previously had little to offer in winter. Now they eagerly woo snowmobilers, who spend millions on fuel, food, lodging and entertainment.

“It’s big business,” said Sue Wagner, spokeswoman for the Michigan Travel Bureau.

Supporters describe snowmobiling as wholesome family fun, insisting the boozers and speed demons are a small minority.

“The media focuses on the bad apples,” said Kay Lloyd of Kirkland, Wash., chairwoman of the International Snowmobile Council, an umbrella group representing riders’ clubs.

She said drunkenness is becoming less of a problem because of safety campaigns sponsored by clubs, snowmobile manufacturers, beer companies and government agencies.

“I haven’t seen anybody drunk at my place yet,” said Rick Bradway, who welcomes snowmobilers at his Munising, Mich., motel.

Others are skeptical.

“They may be a minority but it’s a significant minority,” said Mike McDonnell, a Michigan conservation officer who often patrols trails searching for intoxicated riders. He vividly recalls the one who refused to stop and plowed into a fellow officer, who miraculously escaped serious injury.

“There’s a lot of idiots out there,” said Ken Rutka, a Chicago firefighter who recently toured Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by snowmobile.

Sipping coffee in a Munising tavern on a below-zero night, Rutka said he knows snowmobilers who habitually ride after drinking too much. “Their days are numbered,” he said.

All agree the typical drunken rider is a male between ages 20 and 35, traveling with two or three companions. Roy Muth, president of a snowmobile manufacturers’ trade group, said its research showed most violators don’t belong to clubs and have had no safety training.

“Youngsters. They drink and hop on their machines and see who’s fastest,” McDonnell said during a recent patrol in Michigan’s rural Marquette County.

“They get this ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ mentality . . . try to get the cops to chase them.”

Hampered by funding and personnel shortages, police can patrol only a fraction of the state’s 4,600 miles of groomed trails at a time.

Yet their presence, however limited, is worthwhile, Bacon said. “We’re a deterrent. The trail system would be absolutely unsafe if we weren’t out there at all.”

One problem, he says, is that Michigan’s punishment is a mere $100 fine. Jail time and stiffer fines would be imposed under a proposal before the state legislature to treat intoxicated snowmobiling as a form of drunken driving.

New Hampshire, which had nine fatalities the winter of 1991-92, has a similar law and limits trail speed to 45 m.p.h.

“Speed is what sells these new snowmobiles,” said Anne Hewitt, of the state’s fish and game department.

Snowmobiling clubs supported the speed limit, she said, largely because New Hampshire’s mountainous terrain and winding trails make high speed impractical. That’s not the case in Michigan, where Bacon said a speed limit could not be enforced.

In Colorado, “horrified” officials launched a safety education program after six people died in snowmobiling accidents last year, said Dave Hause, field services chief for the parks department.

New York in 1992 made drunken snowmobiling punishable by a year in prison or a $500 fine. The death toll went from 16 that year to 19 in 1992-93 but is down this year, state snowmobiling coordinator Victor Wood said.

Michigan’s pending crackdown would come too late for Albert Perreault. The volunteer firefighter happened upon the scene of last month’s deadly crash while driving to his cousin’s birthday party.

He discovered that one of the victims was his cousin’s 17-year-old daughter, and had to break the news to her parents.

“It was terrible,” said Perreault, 48. “You just hope other kids will see what can happen and learn their lesson. Unfortunately, it’s good for couple of weeks and then they forget about it.”