According to Troy Police, Dacin was out riding ATVs with her flight instructor Saturday night when she hit a cement pad just before 1 a.m., causing the rollover. Dacin was ejected from the vehicle and hit her head. The ATV then landed on top of her.

Dacin was taken to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where doctors pronounced her dead just before 2 a.m. The Oakland County Meidcal Examiner’s Office said the official cause of death was head trauma. Dacin was not wearing a helmet when the accident occurred.

Dacin’s friend, Tracy Freeland, who graduated from Utica High School with her in 2006, said that Dacin liked to ride motorcycles and had considered joining the Air Force.

“She was a wild child. She just wanted to laugh and have fun,” Freeland told the Free Press. “She wanted to fly.”

Police are currently investigating whether alcohol played a factor in the ATV crash.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 816 ATV-related fatalities occurred in 2007, the agency’s most recent annual estimate. The federal government does not include side-by-side vehicles such as the Yamaha Rhino and certain Polaris models in its ATV estimates, so the fatalities linked to all off-road vehicles would be much higher.

The Free Press report says that Dacin was driving a quad, which the driver straddles – an ATV according to government classification.

The CPSC has reported a 53 percent increase in the number of ATV deaths from 1999 to 2007. The agency also estimates that about 135,000 people were treated in emergency rooms for injuries caused by an ATV crash, compared with 81,800 in 1999 – a 65 percent increase. One-fifth of all ATV deaths involved children.

SOURCE: Yamaha Rhino Rollover › ATV rollover kills 22-year-old student pilot

The boy’s parents told authorities they did not know the boy had taken the ATV and that they began to search for him “within several minutes.” They found the boy just after 7 p.m. trapped in the water underneath the overturned vehicle. The parents administered CPR until emergency medical help arrived.

Maryland’s Office of the Chief medical Examiner has ruled the boy’s death to be an accidental drowning.

Authorities say the boy was found wearing a helmet. According to the parents, he was allowed to ride the Polaris ATV, but they told authorities the ATVs had been put away for the night.

The investigation remains open, though Police have stated that it appears no laws were broken.

Maryland law prohibits children under 12 years to operate ATVs on public land, but there are no restrictions for ATV use on private property in the state.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has evaluated the safety standards for ATVs as established by the Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Association and found that they do not “adequately address the deaths and injuries associated with ROV rollovers and collisions.” Inadequate lateral stability, undesirable steering characteristics, and insufficient occupant protection during rollover crashes are some of the characteristics that make the vehicles so dangerous, the CPSC says.

In a statement last October about the dangers of ATVs, Inez Tenenbaum urged parents to keep their children off of ATVs.

“I urge all riders and passengers to strap on a helmet, use the seat belt, know the terrain, and never allow anyone under 16 to drive these vehicles,” Tenenbaum said.

Polaris touts its line of child-oriented vehicles with the tagline: TOUGH ATVs FOR TOUGH KIDS

SOURCE: Yamaha Rhino Rollover › Maryland boy drowns after ATV rollover

Seven game wardens and other authorities from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department and the Ellsworth Fire Department launched a search of Seymour’s hunting grounds that evening. A state trooper spotted Seymour’s truck parked on a rural road in the town of Ellsworth, allowing the search party to narrow its search in the broad region.

Game wardens discovered Seymour pinned underneath his ATV just before midnight. He was found dead at the scene, the victim of a rollover accident.

According to the Daily News, the Maine Warden Service said that Seymour had been riding on a steep trail with a granite edge when he apparently lost control of the vehicle, causing it to roll over on top of him.

Alcohol was not believed to be a factor, according to the Daily News report. Seymour was not wearing a helmet, but reports do not say whether he died as a result of head injuries.

Like other states with large swaths of wilderness and several rural communities, Maine has seen a dramatic upswing in the number of ATV related deaths and injuries in recent years. The rise in the number of ATV accidents reflects a national trend that has prompted the U.S. Consumer Safety Products Commission to initiate the process of regulating all-terrain vehicles. The CPSC has stated that ATV manufacturers have failed to hold themselves to adequate safety standards, therefore creating the need for government regulation.

SOURCE: Yamaha Rhino Rollover › Maine hunter dies in ATV rollover