In case anyone had any doubt about the dangers of Yamaha Rhino ATVs, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission makes it clear: They kill people — even when driven at slow speeds and on level surfaces, as is often the case in a fatal Yamaha Rhino rollover accident.

After a study of 50 incidents involving the Rhino 450, 660 and 700 models — incidents which claimed 46 driver and passenger deaths — the CPSC concluded that these vehicles, as designed and manufactured by Yamaha, should not be driven by anyone, anywhere, anytime. “Owners of the affected Rhinos should stop using them,” the CPSC urged.

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Your car was just rear-ended by a distracted motorist blabbing on his cell phone and now — through no fault of your own — you’ve got bills to pay for damages. What time is it? It’s HAMMER TIME.

You’ve waited months for your insurance company to make good on its policy and pay for your property damage after Hurricane Ike or some other calamity — and now you’re still waiting. What time is it? It’s HAMMER TIME.

Your child was injured in a Yamaha Rhino accident when the ATV rolled over on a flat surface due to manufacturer design negligence, and now she faces surgery. What time is it? It’s HAMMER TIME.

Your loved one suffered a near-fatal overdose of powerful narcotic fentanyl from a defective Duragesic pain patch, and now requires special care. What time is it? It’s HAMMER TIME.

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Even in a down economy, people must have their “toys,” and one of the more costly and popular diversions is an ATV, or all terrain vehicle. When you ride and ramble roughly on a bouncy ATV trail, it can eclipse your anxieties about the world at large with excitement and thrills from the world rushing past beneath your wheels.

Among ATVs — also called an ROV or UTV — a big seller has been the Yamaha Rhino. Its popularity stems in part from the fact that its narrower design enables it to be loaded onto a pickup truck for transporting to off-road recreation tracks.

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Again, an ATV accident has taken a tragic toll. Former NBA standout Rodney Rogers has been paralyzed from the neck down after suffering injuries in an ATV accident in his home state of North Carolina.

Rogers, who played 12 seasons in the NBA, won the league’s Sixth Man Award in 2000 for his contributions to the Phoenix Suns. Before his professional career, he was a star player for Wake Forest University, earning All America honors. He retired from professional basketball in 2005.

Rogers, 37, reportedly was riding an ATV, or all terrain vehicle, on private property north of Raleigh, N.C., when he fell off or was thrown from the vehicle. In the process, his spinal cord was severely injured. Rogers is now in Atlanta to start a rehabilitation process.

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While ATV is an umbrella term for the small off-road recreational vehicles whose sales have topped seven million units, Yamaha would rather call its Rhino a UTV.

Why? Because designating the Rhino differently relieves Yamaha from federal safety standards applied to ATVs. And because muddying the waters with rotating terms confuses regulators with the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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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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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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Fall is coming, the air is cooling, and fall fun is in that air.

Just be sure your fall fun doesn’t lead to a fall — or other accident — involving an all terrain vehicle.

Small ATVs such as Yamaha Rhino ATVs are not road-worthy — in fact, they’re illegal to drive on Texas streets and highways. Rather, they are meant for off-road recreation. The trouble is, thousands of ATV users are having so much “recreation” that it’s maiming or killing them.

High-profile victims have included rocker Ozzy Osbourne, who broke six ribs, his collarbone and a vertebra in his neck in a 2003 ATV accident, and sax player LeRoi Moore of the Dave Matthews Band, who died two months after an ATV accident last June.

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Any traffic fatality is a tragedy, but we can take cold comfort in the fact that many such tragedies at least involve people with a purpose. We need our cars and trucks for useful functions, and that’s what many people are pursuing when they’re killed or injured while driving or riding in them. They are trying to get from point A to point B in order to reach their job, buy groceries, pick up their kids or get home in time for dinner.

But many vehicular accidents involve no purpose at all other than sheer – or mere — recreation. These accidents may range from the wildly reckless motorcyclists who terrorize Houston’s freeways by zipping between cars at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour to the thousands of people – including too many children – who take joy rides of their own on a far different vehicle: an all-terrain vehicle or ATV. (more…)

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