Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

A Mississippi coroner has become a strong advocate of tougher laws governing the operation of all-terrain vehicles because of the horrific injuries she has seen on the job. Carolyn Gillentine-Green, the Coroner of Lee County, Mississippi, told Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger that she supported any measures that would improve ATV safety in her state. “I’m a proponent for anything to make it safer,” Gillentine-Green told the paper.

In July 2008, Gillentine-Green pronounced the deaths of 20-year-old Crystal Hooper and her 5-year-old cousin Natalie Aguilar after the ATV they were on crashed. According to available reports, Hooper lost control of the ATV and ran into a trailer full of building supplies. Both Hooper and Aguilar sustained head injuries in the accident.

Mississippi remains one of the few states with almost no laws pertaining to the use of ATVs. As a result, the number of ATV-related injuries and deaths in Mississippi is three times higher than in most other parts of the country.

ATV deaths have been creeping upward in the state since 1981, but the numbers suddenly spiked in 2005. From then until 2007, the last statistically current year in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s data, 65 ATV-related deaths occurred, representing more than 25 percent of all the state’s ATV-related deaths since 1981.

According to state numbers, 29 people were killed and 1,500 seriously injured in ATV accidents in Mississippi last year alone.

A bill that would have encouraged ATV safety died in Mississippi’s last legislative session, but Republican State Representative Dannie Reed plans to reintroduce a similar bill in the upcoming session. The legislation would require all ATV drivers to wear helmets while driving on public land. Drivers also would have to meet the minimum age requirement for the vehicle and the number of passengers would be restricted. Ignoring the safety laws would cost $100 per violation.

“Mississippi has lost more people on ATVs than the state has lost soldiers to the Iraq war,” Reed told the Clarion-Ledger.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.