Personal Injury Law

Teenaged Boy Killed and Four Others Seriously Hurt by in Kansas City ATV Accident

By Jeff Lowe, Esq.

A serious ATV accident took a Kansas City high school student's life and seriously injured four others on Oct. 29 in eastern Kansas. Matt Skeens, 16, was an honor roll student who played basketball and golf and had been part of this year's homecoming court. He and several friends were riding on private property east of La Cygne when the accident occurred, just over the Kansas state line. As a Missouri all-terrain vehicle crash lawyer, I am sorry to hear that more people have been hurt by ATVs, which can be extremely dangerous. My sympathies go to the family of the young man who was killed, and I wish those who were injured a full and speedy recovery.

Skeens and his friends were out of school for a scheduled teacher in-service day at Pembroke Hill School. The article from the Osawatomie Graphic didn?t say how the crash happened, but Skeens was pronounced dead at the scene. Linn County Sheriff Barry Walker said that an autopsy showed that Skeens suffered severe trauma and was killed instantly. The other four victims were taken to area hospitals, and were so badly injured that Linn County officials still had not been able to interview them by the following Monday morning. An investigation is ongoing.

Unfortunately, this is just another of several ATV accidents that have claimed lives in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois in recent years. The problem is that many ATVs are inherently dangerous, even when they are ridden according to the manufacturer's directions. As a St. Louis ATV defect lawyer , I've worked with many victims injured by ATVs with defects in their designs. The instability of many ATVs is one serious problem -- even more than sport-utility vehicles, ATVs are top-heavy and can flip easily. Many ATV riders are killed or injured when their ATVs flip over, sometimes even during normal riding, and crush them. Other serious safety problems have plagued ATVs as well, including fire hazards and defective controls that have sparked decades of recalls.

You might expect that ATV manufacturers would change the designs of their products once they knew that those products could kill users. But as the decades-long track record of recalls shows, this hasn't been the case. Despite investigations by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission and calls to ban ATVs for children, they are legal for almost everyone in almost every state, and don?t even need helmets in most places. Manufacturers even market these products with descriptions like "aggressive," encouraging riders to use them in the same hazardous ways that cause deadly rollovers. Defective and dangerous ATVs keep going on the market, putting consumers at risk of brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations and even death. Those who survive suffer severe pain, end up owing thousands of dollars in medical bills, lose out on wages they or their caretakers could have earned at work, and may sustain permanent disabilities.

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog on November 05, 2010 (boomark / email).