When you pay $10,000 or more for a recreational vehicle, you’d expect it to be safe to drive. Sadly, that’s often not the case with an ATV, or all terrain vehicle.

Again, an ATV accident has claimed a life, this time in the Houston area. Howard Lewis Bear, 33, of Crosby died Friday night in a Channelview ATV accident.

Harris County sheriff’s deputies said Bear’s son and daughter were in the vehicle with him, and none were wearing safety helmets when the crash occurred, ejecting all three from the ATV. The children were not seriously injured.

The cause of the crash? All we know is that Bear lost control of the ATV. At that point, the absence of safety helmets became a factor. Also, ATVs are essentially one-person vehicles which should not carry passengers. But the bottom line is that this accident happened because the driver lost control of his vehicle, and that driver, Bear, is now dead.

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Finally, progress is being made in the face of mounting carnage on America’s roads due to driver distractions caused by cell phones. And it’s not what you might expect.

No, it’s not a new state law, such as those in New York and California, which bans using cell phones while driving without a headset that frees both hands. Rather, this progress comes in the form of a device which will disable cell phones for real-time talking, texting or receiving messages while that phone is moving at a speed associated with a vehicle.

A Canadian software company called Aegis Mobility has developed the device, which is called a DriveAssistT. In effect, it takes the decision to use a cell phone while driving out of the driver’s hands.

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Last month, a Michigan woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison when four of her bulldogs got loose from her property and, without provocation, attacked and killed two people. This week, such justice was applied for the first time in Texas.

A couple who live near Breckenridge in North Central Texas has been convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison after their pit bull dogs killed a 7-year-old neighbor.

This is Texas’ first conviction under a new law which holds dog owners responsible when their animals are unsecured and wind up injuring or killing someone in an unprovoked attack off their property. Such a tragedy would not occur if dog owners were not negligent of their duty to protect others.

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How dangerous are Yamaha Rhino ATVs and other ATVs? How dangerous do you want them to be?

Indeed, danger and risk seem to be selling points for these highly accident-prone vehicles, whose wildly erratic and thrill-driven operation winds up killing and maiming thousands of Americans each year. In large part that’s because Yamaha Rhino and other ATVs fail to live up to their fun-loving promise, and instead wreak havoc due to manufacturing design errors which make them inherently unsafe.

Even so, mastering such risks is part of the hype that drives  Yamaha Rhino and other ATV sales, if you check out ads and promotional clips used to sell them. These show the strange vehicles – which look like reckless little brothers of Apollo’s Lunar Rovers – bouncing and churning down bumpy roads, across creeks and up steep, muddy hills. The more difficult and dangerous the terrain, the better, seems to be the message. Yet the promise made to buyers is exhilaration – not extinction.

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While buses in general can be as risky as trying to draw on an inside straight, casino tour buses can be an even worse bet.

In California Sunday, a casino tour bus taking passengers from Sacramento to a gambling den flipped over and rolled into a ditch, killing eight people and critically injuring at least 30 others. As this and other bus accidents have shown, buses can be extremely dangerous when they turn over, which they often do.

The California Highway Patrol said the bus driver was perhaps on medication, and CHP has charged that driver with driving under the influence. The bus also lacked a valid license plate, having expired Texas plates. Built in the 1980s, the bus also lacked seatbelts, but that’s a common failing on buses.

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