Posted by Editor | Posted in Personal Injury News
The “unofficial passage” of spring to summer occurs this Memorial Day Weekend, so enjoy your extra day off. If you decide to take your ATV vehicle out for a ride this weekend, please be careful. ATV accidents can lead to serious personal injuries and even death, as the case of Chandler Saylor depicts. The 16-year-old Saylor died in a South Carolina accident four years ago when he lost control of the vehicle and slammed into a tree. Just recently, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford vetoed a bill in honor of Chandler for the third straight year. Known as “Chandler’s Law,” this bill would have required children to wear protective gear when riding ATVs.
Sanford was quoted in a story in the online edition of The Times and Democrat as saying that such ATV legislation would infringe on the private property rights of people in the state by requiring them to take an ATV safety class with their kids in their own backyards. Proponents of this bill say that it is necessary to prevent more children from dying on ATVs. Chandler Saylor’s mother Pamela said in the story that three more children have died on ATVs in the state since Sanford’s veto last year. State Senator Brad Hutto added that he will mobilize fellow Senators to try to override Sanford’s veto.
South Carolina is not the only state to witness ATV safety legislation fall to the wayside this year. A Louisiana ATV safety bill that would have required children between the ages of 7 and 16 to take safety lessons and wear eye protection and a helmet in order to ride these vehicles recently failed in the state legislature. A KTBS3 story detailed that this Louisiana ATV legislation would have also banned children under six from operating an ATV and imposed fines of $50 to $500 for violators. Opponents to the legislation claimed that it would have punished parents riding ATVs with children on their laps while proponents said that it would have reduced the death and injury rate.
Despite these setbacks to ATV safety legislation, the need to understand proper riding techniques should not be discounted.
Louisiana HB 747 is not dead.
The Child ATV Safety Bill will return to the House floor tomorrow for a re-vote.
If the bill passes it will move to the Senate where it will have 2 weeks until the end of the session to pass.