Oblivious To Harm

One might well ask what exactly it should take for parents to be more cognizant of the potential danger their blind trust in kind fate exposes their children to when they permit children as young as 8, 10 and 12 to drive all-terrain vehicles, convinced this is a fine way to entertain them.

If safety is not uppermost in a parent’s mind as he or she glows with pride in the mechanical capability of their clever budding adult, they’ve managed somehow to shed the most basic of parental instincts.

Yet every year news media regale the public with sad and very avoidable stories of the death of another child whose parents - by all accounts, simply had no idea that their permissiveness in the face of a child’s insistence that he be permitted the freedom to operate a potentially danger vehicle - were instrumentally complicit in that child’s death.

Children driving ski-doos during the winter, and fatally losing control, hitting an immovable object, or being submerged into a semi-frozen lake. In the summer months, the issue of children operating motorboats, endangering themselves and others seeking leisure and recreation on holiday lakes.

The latest edition of the sad saga of parental oblivion to the dangers their children face when permitted to drive powerful machines comes through the auspices of the Canadian Association of Pediatric Surgeons in their statement published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.

“As the professionals who must deal with many of the injuries sustained by children and the grief experienced by their families, we are first witnesses to this serious yet preventable problem. When recreation becomes lethal or results in permanent disability and heartache for a family, then it can no longer be considered fun.”

Amazing, is it not, that a community can be aware of the dangers inherent in permitting youngsters under twelve years of age to operate powerful machines, yet remain comforted in the belief that some misfortune obviously befell an injured or deceased child with the fatal combination of childish incapacity and brute force yielded disaster.

It couldn’t possibly happen to one of their children, who just happen to be more capable and trustworthy. And these parents have the full support and encouragement of - who else? - the all-terrain vehicle industry.

A spokesperson of the ATV industry summarily shrugged off the appropriateness of the suggested ban by the pediatric surgeons. Formal instruction, closer supervision by parents, use of size-appropriate vehicles are all that is required to ensure no injury and fatalities occur.
“…these machines are fun, family, recreational machines” claimed Jo-Anne Farquar of the Canadian off-highway vehicle distributors council.

With sales in Canada alone topping $1-billion - representing 89,000 units sold, both in 2006 and 2007, little wonder they might bristle at the very thought of cautious parents eschewing the wonderful opportunity to entertain their children at the cost of their limbs or lives.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that numbers of individuals injured seriously enough to require hospitalization rose to 2,800 annually up to 2004, a rise of 66% from 8 years previously. Researchers at the University of Alberta alone recently reported the number of overall deaths attributed to ATV-use soared 83% between 2005 and 2006.

The critics - spoil-sports all - who argue against the use of children using ATVs point out the obvious. Children don’t possess the necessary cognitive skills or sound judgement, let alone the technical ability to manoeuvre the vehicles safely, as compared to adults.

Not that adult operators - those fun-seeking enthusiasts - have themselves been immune to death and injury. Which is why, although they cannot legislate for adults, medical-health authorities do recommend a prohibition on children under 16 operating ATVs.

Nor should children younger than 16 be passengers on these all-terrain vehicles, most of which have been designed for a sole rider, no passenger. But then there’s that mind-set of people valuing their individualism, their maturity to make sound decisions for themselves and their beloved children.

Who are unwilling to be boxed in by fear tactics engendered by people who don’t quite appreciate all the fun and enjoyment their children would be denied. They just don’t believe harm will come to their children, until it happens.

In the word of one sorrowing mother: “We kept thinking it was a freak accident because this was never publicized back then (in 2002). But there was nothing freaky about it.”