ATV Accident Death and Injury Statistics – Minnesota

Minnesota isn’t spared from ATV fatalities and serious accidents. In 2016, there was 13 Class I fatalities in the state and three Class II fatalities, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources reported. In most of these fatal accidents, an ATV roll-over did occur.

According to the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety, 411 people have been killed on the state roads in 2015. Of these people, 10 were ATV riders.

Minnesota ATV Fire Hazard Overview

As far as ATV road hazards are concerned, a Minnesota-based all-terrain vehicle company recently became infamous because it had to recall a large number of vehicles from the market.

Polaris, a popular brand in the field, had to recall a total of 133,000 off-road vehicles from the market after reports about 160 fires, one of them with a fatal outcome. The announcement came in April 2016 after more than 100 ATVs manufactured by Polaris Industries burst into flames on the road.

A faulty fuel tank is to blame for the fires, CPSC reported. The analysis shows that the tank could be pinched, which would lead to fuel leakages. Polaris has refused to make an official statement about the faulty part, as well as about the accident in which one of the company’s ATVs caught on fire and killed a 15-year-old in Utah.

The Latest ATV Crashes and Fatalities

Minnesota has had its fair share of ATV crashes over the years.

At the end of May 2017, there were four ATV crashes over the course of one weekend in a single county. All of them occurred in Cass County, and one had a fatal outcome. A driver aged 57 was pinned under the vehicle after it turned over on an ATV trail. A similar accident involved a man aged 22.

In a separate accident, a man and a woman were injured when the driver lost control of the Polaris ATV. The vehicle rolled over several times, and it eventually struck a mailbox. Both parties were transported to the hospital for injury treatment. The final accident had a lethal outcome due to a driver losing control of the ATV. The vehicle was carrying three people, but the driver was ejected from the ATV and eventually pronounced dead at the site of the accident.

In the period from 1982 to 2012, Minnesota has had 300 ATV crashes with a fatal outcome. The number of crashes that led to deaths was 26 in the period from 2013 to 2015.