Off-road vehicles are more dangerous on-road. So why push for use on public roads? I don’t get it.

More than 14,000 people, including roughly 3,200 children age 15 or younger, have been killed in crashes of all-terrain vehicles since federal safety officials began keeping track in the early 1980s.

Studies have shown (here and here) that over half of the deaths occur on public or private roads — even though ATVs are required to display safety warnings that they are not designed to be operated safely on roads.

Yet in recent years, officials in small towns and rural areas around the country, at the urging of riding enthusiasts, have been approving the use of ATVs — and other off-road machines known as recreational off-highway vehicles, or ROVs — on public roadways. Safety advocates have pushed back, but they are losing more fights than they win. . .

Read more here: Despite Hazards, Push to Open Public Roads to Off-Road Vehicles in High Gear, Fair Warning, By Paul Feldman on August 1, 2017