The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2022

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Styleguide

apa

Degree Name

Criminal Justice: M.S.

Department

Criminal Justice

College

School of Public Affairs

First Advisor

Douglas Gilbertson

Second Advisor

Dick Andzenge

Third Advisor

Mario Hesse

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

ATV safety training, educational injustice, negligent, criminal justice, health, public safety

Abstract

All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) are fun to ride but they are only a machine. As much as everyone would like to blame the ATV when things go wrong, the end result ultimately stems from the operator’s actions. It doesn’t have a brain, it does what you tell it to do, and it cannot tell the operator that this is a bad idea or what the consequences might be. These thoughts are ultimately the operator’s responsibility to assess and acknowledge what risks exist. Driving is a skill and education is a key portion of ATV safety training. Our current requirements are not regulated to be the same across the nation, creating complicated and miss-matched rules that vary from one state to the next. If knowledge is power and experience takes practice than ATV safety training could be the difference between life and death. In this study, there were 447 fatalities reported in Minnesota and Wisconsin during 2007-2020 that were attributed to ATVs but only 6% of these individuals had ATV safety training. Adults in the sample represented a whopping 82.7% of the population and our current system is providing a perpetually failing protective system that continuously provides our citizens with an educational injustice that is on the border of being negligent. It is time that we work together to fix this by requiring all ATV operators to take an ATV safety training class that teaches the same fundamental material, regardless of their age or experience level. This training is a valuable tool in reducing and preventing injuries or deaths and age should never be used as the defining characteristic that decides if safety education is necessary because age will never be a reliable indicator of experience on these machines, contrary to popular belief.

Comments/Acknowledgements

All Minnesota and Wisconsin DNR reports are included in the reference section so the data can be studied by anyone who reads this project since they are not easily accesbile online without the direct link.

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