Throttle Blog

A fight last weekend at the beach prompted the gestapo city leaders to initiate a bill for a booze ban at the beach.

Bastards!!

I knew it was just a matter of time. I mean, why not? In El Cajon you’re not allowed to smoke. Not even in your back yard. There’s a city (I forget where and I’m too damn lazy to go research it) that is or will be banning people from wearing their pants down past their butt crack. (That one is pure bullshit because it’s taking away from MY entertainment!)

Anyway, I just wanted to take this opportunity to warn you that, while I’m not an alarmist, I have seen a lot of people’s freedoms taken away from them slowly over the last couple of decades, and it’s just a matter of time before it affects you and something you enjoy doing.

So be careful what you wish for. Trying to get something taken away from someone else will ultimately end up getting something taken away from you in return.

Last week when the two girls, 13 and 10, in Arizona rode that ATV into the mine shaft where the 13 year old died, it got me to thinking. I’ve recently been tracking ATV accidents, and when I saw this one, even before it started getting national coverage, I wondered what went wrong.

In my study, I count the total number of accidents, and separate them in to categories that tell me things like how many wore a helmet, rode on pavement, rode with passengers, rode a quad that’s too big, etc.

I read about a dozen of these a week, so I try not to let the stories get to me, but this one did. I realize most of the facts point to a fairly safe trip, except riding a passenger, which I believe in this case would not have made a difference.

So what went wrong?

Here’s what went wrong… The father was ahead of them, and went back to look when he realized they were missing. They were riding at night, so he didn’t see the mine shaft. He didn’t have another adult in back of the group either. But even that might not have made a difference, because authorities say the girl that died, died instantly in the fall.

Residents of the area know there are dozens of abandoned, unmarked mines out there in the hills where the two girls were riding. At night.

I think there are several things this family could have done to prevent this, like staying on trails, etc, and they could have saved the younger sister of the trauma of spending the night next to her dead sister by having an adult ride in back.

I also think the state of Arizona needs to step up and do something about the thousands of abandoned mines. At the very least, mark them. Put together a community project to go out and find them, mark them and warn people about it.