100% Preventable

Dr. Jean-Denis Yelle is fed up with treating spinal injuries, punctured lungs, ruptured spleens and serious rib fractures. As director of trauma services at the Ottawa Hospital he cleans up the tragic mess that adults find themselves in as a result of careless use of all-terrain vehicles. He deplores the needless deaths of people dying from ATV crashes. The accidents, he says occur mostly at night.

"These accidents are 100% preventable" according to Dr. Yelle. "It's simple in Quebec, you have to be at least 16 years old to operate an ATV. It doesn't matter if it's private property or not" according to the general manager of the Canadian Safety Council. In Ontario, he says, it's a little different: "To be on a road, you have to have a driver's license. To be on a trail, you have to be 12 years old; and on private property they can be any age."

People going off trail, falling off the machine, because they cannot control it. They're driving too fast, or driving under the influence of alcohol. There are approximately 850,000 ATVs in use in Canada. The number of hospitalizations necessitated by serious injuries in the last eleven years has increased by 72%, across the country, according to the manager of clinical registries at the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

And then there are the child deaths. Invariably, the parents, the care-givers, those in position of authority and care for young children, see nothing wrong in encouraging children as young as seven, to drive ATVs. They want their children to enjoy themselves, to have fun, to face outdoor challenges. And so, summer and winter, children are involved in accidents, driving these vehicles. Guardians of children can be fined up to $500 for non-compliance of law.

But nothing restores a child to life.

And they die. Always, after such events, people sigh in fond memory of these boldly adventurous children, calling them "angels". And so it was with the latest, a 7-year-old boy from Aylmer, Quebec who died after crashing an ATV last week. Reporters love interviewing neighbours, and neighbours are happy to oblige, explaining how much these children loved riding their all-terrain vehicles.

This little boy, Jonathan Blais, was supervised by his father's father, and his own father. Father and grandfather, they were both content to have this child experience the joy of driving a motorized device with the potential to inflict harm on a 7-year-old whose understanding of mechanics, whose physical capacity and reactions could not be equated with those of an adult.

"He was my little angel", Jonathan's grandfather mourned. The little boy had his own gas-powered ATV which he was driving, as usual, on his grandfather's property. The child, whose parents were separated, spent a lot of time with his grandfather. Neighbours described the accident to have occurred when the little boy drove his ATV directly into a tree in front of his grandfather's house.

"Great little boy and an excellent family. The grandson was there most of the time. Pierre (the grandfather) adored that little boy, said one neighbour. His own 9-year-old son doesn't own an ATV, but he was permitted to ride with Jonathan, as they were pals.

The neighbour, in assessing the situation, avowed as how he doesn't think he'll provide his son with an ATV of his own, now.