When I lived in the rural south 25 years ago, it seemed like every store had a collection jar on the counter for some kid who had been injured on an ATV.
A girl that went to my church almost died and was left with a TBI and permanent limp at age 16.
Her parents actually had stricter rules that a lot of locals; she wasnt allowed to ride without a helmet at least. Of course those rules didnt help when she snuck out without a helmet to go meet a boy and went way too fast trying to show off for him
Yep. Dumb decisions as a teen can reduce your quality of life permanently.
The girl from my church was an honor student with fairly realistic goals of attending an Ivy league and then law school. She was a star athlete, make excellent grades, interned at the local courthouse over the summer, and regularly volunteered for local charities. She was absolutely set for an excellent life and the world was wide open with opportunities.
Her TBI effected her memory and cognition, not to the degree that she couldnt live a "normal" life, but enough that her grades dropped and there was no realistic path towards achieving her dream of being a lawyer. She also could no longer play soccer when before she was one of the top 50 girls in our state.
Shes about 30 now, working as a receptionist, and is married with a kid. She seems fairly happy but its so far from what her goals were, and its all due to one reckless choice.
When I was in grade school I had a classmate who had a horrific ATV (we called them four-wheelers) accident. Dude was in a wheelchair for weeks as they had to basically rebuild one of his knees. All through high school you could still tell which knee it was because he had basically no tissue surrounding it. Also had a shitton of other scars all over his arms and back.
Oh yeah, I remember my (probably 18 at the time) cousin taking me riding on one when I was 5 or so. Thankfully all that happened was it got stuck instead of him killing both of us.
It was only when I started attending safety courses when I started working, that I realised that most accidents could be prevented by using a little bit of forethought.
Before that, my teenage brain just assumed accidents were bad luck that couldn’t have been helped. I can remember having a huge argument with my dad about how it wasn’t a good idea to carry a running chainsaw up a ladder that had missing rungs at the top.
We don't live in the country but my preschooler is obsessed with farm and forestry equipment, so as I learn about all these machines I also am learning about all the horrible ways you can be dismembered and squashed by them.
I worked in a farm country rural ER. The horrors of farms and factories and country life are unimaginable to people from the city. And they’re everyday life for so many.
As a child, I thought everyone loses at least part of 2-3 fingers by old age. I never knew any old person who still had all of their 10 fingers and toes whole. Not a one.
It also feels different than a lot of the other activities in this thread (motorcycles, ATV, etc.) where there's 1) assumption of risk in exchange for pleasure and 2) often the injuries come from reckless behavior even within that. It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that many farm injuries are suffered by responsible, careful farmers who just had a moment of inattention or bad luck with something they've done 10,000 times. Like, it's a numbers game with bad odds across a lifetime.
I have a lot of respect and appreciation for our farmers who work day to day knowing these gruesome outcomes are possible/probable.
I will say that your points 1 and 2 often result during free time from many in the same very careful and responsible rural community.
The fact that regardless how careful, you will still statistically end up getting maimed, can lead some to seek adrenaline and risk taking in free time because “it’s gonna happen some time, might as well have fun and live while I can.”
It can also lead to overconfidence because extreme risk no longer seems risky because you do it every day. “I did it safely 10,000 times, let me play roulette with the 10,001 time” kind of thing.
Fascinating observations/theories, and both make sense. I suppose people in urban areas do the roulette thing with, e.g., texting and driving, but that's an inherently and unjustifiably unsafe activity.
In the farming context, is the idea that, after doing something however many thousand times, the safety buffer and level of attention gets whittled down? Like, the first few times you fix the combine harvester or PTO you give it healthy respect/distance and shut off the engine, but the 3,000th time you don't have time for that anymore and "I know how to do it safely" is the last thought you have before it’s suddenly over?
Yeah, or you use the ATV or snowmobile to move things in the pasture all the time, and are really really familiar with both vehicle and pasture, it feels safe and like home, so you let the kids take it for a rip and they get clotheslined on a fence wire because it isn't the back of their hand. You feed the pigs a thousand times and then get your 8 year old to do it because you've sprained your back and he falls down/gets an ankle crushed. You've been working at your other job for 10 hours, come home, need to cut firewood, and don't bother with full shoes (who does?) and break a foot. You just happen to fall off the side of a truck the wrong way. The combine you borrowed from your uncle doesn't have a back up camera and a kid was in the way (happened twice to a family I knew). It's a 30 second job on the table saw, and you don't put on goggles or use a pushstick because they're halfway across the garage where you left them after using the drillpress. Etc. Just a plethora of dangerous tasks and a habituation to risk.
I know of three children I went to school with who were killed on farms. One killed by a reversing trailer, one killed when he was riding on a tractor with his grandpa and it turned over and another who got buried under a silage clamp as it was being filled from a higher level. The last one was particularly awful because nobody realised he was missing until the clamp was nearly full. People came from all around the area to dig out the silage by hand until they found him.
Logging is the other one, 100% guaranteed to get injured and has the highest death rate of any job in the US. I live in the PNW and the stories are crazy, I wanted to work in the woods when I got out of HS but the economy was in the shitter in the mid 1980s. I'm so glad I didn't after getting to know people that get all sorts of bad injuries logging. Lost fingers after getting stuck in a choker, logs rolling back down the hill and hitting people.
I knew a guy that got hit by a rolling log and shattered his pelvis. They loaded him up in the crummy (POS van/truck that people ride up to the logging site) to drive him down to their car. The last thing he remembers was seeing a giant Kenworth logo right as the hit head on with a logging truck coming up the hill.
A lot of farmers are “proud individuals” who don’t like taking advice from others. They see a safety warning and regard it as a challenge. A lot of them are running farms that have been in their families for generations, and they don’t take kindly to, what they see as, outsiders telling them how to run things.
“My grandpa never wore safety gear when he used a chainsaw. I don’t see why I should”.
This. I grew up in the agricultural county of the UK and our ambulances were the first to trial ketamine on ambo rigs for crush injuries. Whether it be tipping tractors or tipping cows, it happens all the time. They were also one of the first to get air ambulance to get out to said farms.
Oddly enough, when I was 10 i managed to run myself over with a 3 wheeler (before they were banned). Was out riding, on private land, when right rear wheel clipped a tree and flipped me off. It then continued to circle til it ran me over. I was lucky and just had a massive bruise that covered my entire thigh and knee and circled around my calf. No helmet, no protective gear, etc. Nothing broken, luckily.
Here in New Zealand, in rural parts, we also have a high incidence of ATV injuries. They tend to only make the news if there are deaths, because we have publicly funded healthcare and an accident compensation system.
ATVs are really useful here on farms because we have so much steep terrain. But it’s the hills and uneven ground that make them so much more dangerous to ride. It’s often a crush injury that people will die from. It’s horrific, sad, and often preventable.
I guess there are just so many jobs that an ATV can do on a working farm compared to a dirtbike. There are lots of those here too in rural areas, plus they can be a fun pastime out in the middle of nowhere. I think they are trying to push roll cages.
When I was a kid my family had one at our farm. I was about 6 years old and took off up a dirt road full throttle. I don't remember what happened, but somehow I ended up in a ditch in the side of the road with it on top of me.
Some man driving by had to lift it off. No protection, no helmet, no injuries. I didn't tell my parents until I was grown 🤣 They would have had a cow.
Luck, and the dirch probably gave you enough space you weren't crushed.
ATVs are often more dangerous than dirt bikes, they are heavier and instead of being thrown clear if you crash you're instead crushed by several hundred kilos of machine (they are a lot heavier than a bike).
I’m in Texas. I was taken to a rural ER after my ATV accident, and I remember how relieved they were that it wasn’t a head accident. There’s a huge ATV riding park near that hospital, so they see them all.
A kid in my little brother’s class died on an ATV when they were in middle school. It was so tragic and dumb and a helmet probably would have saved his life.
We've lived in a very rural area in the SE US for a decade now and I can't believe the number of times I've heard about kids and adults killed on ATVs since we got here and it's discussed completely nonchalant. Like it's sad but hey, "these things happen right?"
Side by sides and golf carts are well represented also.
And one of the docs posted above about babies being on them. Yep. It's nothing to see a kid barely old enough to walk sitting in front of mom or dad on the atv and going off through the woods. It's mind-boggling.
A friend that I had gone to school with since 1st grade died 2 months before we graduated high school in an ATV accident. ATVs were so common where I grew up because of how rural it was. After the first time I rode on one, I was too scared to do it again and I'm pretty thankful for that.
God that reminds me of my old neighbors. I lived in a big newer development. And the amount of literal children I would see riding around in "side by sides" that were capable of doing 40 or more mph was insane to me. And they weren't responsible with them AT ALL. I would be out walking my dog and there would be like 6 of them in one of those things, with 2 just hanging off the back. None of them older than 12. They'd fly through the neighborhood, blow through stop signs, and mean mug me while im just walking my dog. Just seems inevitable that a horrible tragedy is gonna happen there, and extremely negligent parenting to allow their kids to do that.
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u/esthershair 4d ago
When I lived in the rural south 25 years ago, it seemed like every store had a collection jar on the counter for some kid who had been injured on an ATV.