Even though pediatricians warn parents not to let children under 16 ride all-terrain vehicles, young kids are still getting injured and killed in ATV crashes, a U.S. study suggests.

Since 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that ATV use be restricted to youth aged 16 years and older who wear helmets, don’t take passengers and steer clear of roads. Despite these guidelines, the mortality rate from ATV crashes for kids under 18 doesn’t appear to have budged in recent years, researchers report in Pediatrics.

“Too many young children are driving these machines - equivalent to a motorcycle in many ways,” said senior study author Dr. William Hennrikus, medical director of the Pediatric Bone and Joint Clinic at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

“Children should not drive an ATV until they’re over 16, just like driving a motorcycle,” Hennrikus said by email. “Helmets should always be worn, just like a motorcycle.”

For the study, researchers examined data on 1,912 patients under age 18 who were injured while using an ATV and treated at trauma centers in Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2014.

During this period, 28 children died in ATV crashes, a mortality rate of roughly one per every 100,000 kids in the population, researchers calculated.

The injury rate dropped slightly during the study period, from 6.7 kids per 100,000 children in the population over the first five years to 5.8 kids per 100,000 over the second half of the decade. But the decline wasn’t large enough to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance.

Overall, less than half of the kids were wearing helmets and a street or roadway was the crash location in 15 percent of cases.

Being a passenger or being pulled by the ATV was a factor in almost one in four injuries, the study also found.

Half of the kids involved in ATV crashes were 14 or younger, and about 6 percent were no more than 5 years old.

Boys accounted for three in every four patients.

The majority of patients, 55 percent, sustained at least one bone fracture at or below the cervical spine, which is the upper part of the spinal column near the neck. Most often, fractures occurred in major bones in the thigh and shin.

Limitations of the study include the possibility that researchers underestimated injuries and deaths because they only looked at trauma center patients, not children who were treated elsewhere or died before they ever reached a trauma center.

But the findings still underscore the urgency of keeping young children off ATVs and making sure teen drivers follow safety recommendations, said David Schwebel, a sports injury researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Helmets absolutely have to be used for any ride, even short, apparently safe ones,” Schwebel said by email. “Passengers should never ride on ATVs unless the ATV is designed for more than one person.”

Previous research suggests that ATVs cause slightly more injuries than scooters, snow skiing and combative sports like karate, softball and hockey, Schwebel added. However, the vehicles are responsible for slightly fewer injuries than swimming, lacrosse and gymnastics, and they cause far fewer injuries than football or soccer.

Schwebel recommends “ATVs and Youth: Matching Children and Vehicles,” a tip sheet from Penn State for information about ATV safety (here: bit.ly/2qdV9hf).

Age isn’t all parents should consider when deciding whether to let kids get behind the wheel of an ATV, Schwebel added.

“Parents need to think not just about their child’s size, but also their ability to think, to react to emergency situations and to maintain safe, cautious control of a very powerful vehicle,” Schwebel said.

Source: Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-children-atv-injuries-idUSKBN1A422F