ATV Safety: Oregon Gets It

Filed in archive ATV Safety , Legislation/Environment News on November 13, 2007

The Register Guard, a Eugene, Oregon news source, reports that Oregonians will have to "go to school" to ride ATVs, likening it to the same thing that happened with hunters and boaters. As a youth, I grew up hunting in Oregon. I took a hunter's safety course while in grade-school, very similar to the hand-gun course I took here in California at a later age in order to buy hand-guns.

Now they're going to do much the same thing with ATVs there in Oregon, which in my opinion is not such a bad idea. There are way too many folks that seem to take it for granted that an ATV is a safe recreational tool for in-experienced riders. It's not. You can get hurt, you can die. You can seriously hurt someone else.

2007 Oregon Legislature adopted a law that will eventually require everyone who operates a class I or class III ATV on land open to public use to have passed a written safety exam.

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The new ATV law also establishes a new "rider fit" requirement for those under age 16. That rule is intended to prevent youngsters from operating machines too big for them to control.

They don't go in to the "rider fit" requirement very much, but I would guess it has to do with showing skill on an ATV. I'll look in to it to see if I can get more information about that aspect of it.