For years I’ve collected stories about people around the
West who get killed or seriously hurt in off-road driving wrecks. I got
interested in the ongoing tragedy when an admirable young man I knew crashed
his machine in a popular ATV playground. He was a math teacher who inspired one
of my kids. He went off for a motorized weekend in the sand dunes near St. Anthony, Idaho,
and came back to school in a wheelchair.
Saturday, in a famous ATV playground in Utah called Little Sahara, a likable
“political maverick,” Bill Orton, drove his ATV over a drop-off,
crashed and died.
Orton served three terms in Congress (1990-1996) as a
Democrat representing a conservative, usually Republican district. He was 60 years old and he left
behind a wife and two kids. His death is also “a great loss” for his state.
The same day Orton crashed, a 49-ear-old woman, Karin
Vandenberg, died in a Utah
hiking accident. So better acknowledge: Non-motorized outdoor sports are also dangerous.
But the ATV culture is largely about taking risks. The
salesmen hype the machoness of the machines. Many drivers use them for racing through
difficult terrain, thrill-seeking, pushing the limits — the scene on busy weekends when tens of thousands of off-roaders gather in Little Sahara. The psychology causes some ATV drivers to be irresponsible tearing up Western landscape and
habitats for plants and animals. It also provides a rush of temporary freedom
— and too often it ends sooner than expected.
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