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A 31-year-old Minnesota woman died Saturday when the all-terrain vehicle she was a passenger on crashed into a tree. According to the Bemidji Pioneer, Jessica Christopherson was riding on a 2004 Honda TRX 650R ATV driven by Chad Tabaka, also 30 years old, when the accident occurred.
A 5-year-old girl from Iron County, Utah has been hospitalized with injuries she received when the driver of a Yamaha Rhino she was a passenger in lost control of the vehicle and struck a tree. Four other girls ages 5 to 9 were also in the vehicle and suffered minor injuries.
A 19-year old Illinois man died Saturday evening after the all-terrain vehicle he was driving rolled over and landed on top of him. Authorities investigating the accident said the victim, identified as Leonard Mlynarczyk, a resident of Bloomingdale in the Chicago suburbs, was riding his ATV at a park in Yorkville around 10 p.m. Saturday night when the accident occurred.
According to the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recently published all-terrain vehicle data “appears to indicate that the numbers of deaths and injuries caused by ATVs declined in 2008 as compared to 2007.”
In December we reported how one Mississippi coroner became an advocate of stricter laws governing the use of all-terrain vehicles in her state after witnessing the injury and death the vehicles can cause. Now, other people in that state are echoing the call for more ATV legislation, including the Sheriff of Warren County, Mississippi and two state lawmakers.
A 5-year-old South Carolina boy was killed in an all-terrain-vehicle accident on Sunday. According to a report in Greenwood, South Carolina’s Index Journal, Samuel Erik Quarles, a resident of Ware Shoals, died as a result of blunt force trauma to his chest after being thrown from the small ATV he was driving.
Another child has been killed in an all-terrain vehicle accident in Alabama. According to Mobile and Pensacola area press reports, 3-year old girl London Johnson was riding on an ATV with her grandfather, Arthur Lee Rivers, 43, and Isces Johnson, 5 years old, Monday evening when the accident occurred.
Yamaha Rhino safety upgrades urged by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission back in March weren’t enough to save the life of 13-year-old James Wyatt Spencer of Knox, N.Y., who died last week when the 450 he was driving rolled over.
The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, California reported the death of a 31-year-old man who was killed when the Yamaha Rhino he was driving rolled over. Juan Carlos Camarillo, a resident of Garden Grove, Calif., was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Five others were also injured, including one who was airlifted to the hospital in critical condition.
Australia’s Daily Telegraph reports that Yamaha Australia is not extending the same Rhino UTV “voluntary repair program” to Australians that it did to Americans. On March 31, Yamaha America and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission jointly announced that all Rhino customers should return their vehicles to their dealerships for a series of safety upgrades. Additionally, Yamaha instructed its dealerships to cease selling any new Rhino inventory until those upgrades were made.
