ATV accident Death and Injury Statistics – Maryland

Maryland has witnessed an array of serious accidents involving ATVs. A number of these had a fatal outcome. While there haven’t been reports about ATV explosions or serious malfunctions contributing to a fire, the lack of precautionary measures has jeopardized numerous fans of the all-terrain vehicles in the state.

Maryland: Latest ATV Accidents and Deaths

At the beginning of March 2016, an ATV driver died in Darnestown because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Mark Douglas Hutchinson, aged 26, crashed into a car. The accident led to serious injuries, and Hutchinson died later on in the hospital.

An accident left a teenager seriously injured in March 2017. A 14-year-old was driving his ATV when he hit a tree. The Severn teen had an accident at about 5:30 pm and luckily, nobody else was involved. Helicopter transportation was organized to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center because the injuries sustained were life-threatening.

As far as ATV fires go, Maryland has had a couple of these accidents, as well.

In 2013, an ATV was discovered on fire in Nanjemoy, Maryland. According to the firefighting department, the vehicle was set on fire intentionally. This isn’t the only ATV accident from Nanjemoy. In 2016, two men were riding their ATVs on a private property and eventually collided with each other. Both of them were flown to the hospital due to serious injuries.

ATV Statistics for Maryland

In the period from 1982 to 2011, 91 ATV-related deaths have been reported in the state of Maryland. The good news is that only eight such accidents have been registered in the period from 2012 to 2014, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reports.

Just like in many other states, a big number of the accidents and serious injuries (as well as death) include underage ATV drivers, as well as children who are driven by an adult. In 2007 alone, three children died as a result of ATV crashes. The children were aged 12, eight and two at the time of the accident. The grim statistics suggest that people underestimate the dangers linked to the use of all-terrain vehicles and the restrictions concerning underage riders valid for all states.

Such carelessness makes ATVs dangerous. A 2010 Reuters report suggests that ATVs cause more deaths than motorcycles. While the researchers from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Center for Surgery Trials and Outcomes don’t know what the cause of the high risk is exactly, they believe that an ATV turning over is linked to a higher transfer of energy that can make impact or ejection from the vehicle deadly.