Most kids seriously injured in off-road vehicle accidents weren't wearing helmets: Manitoba ER doctor

CBC News

· Posted: Jun 25, 2025 5:30 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Brain bleeds, spinal fractures and amputations are conscionable a fewer of the injuries a Winnipeg pediatric exigency country doc says she's seen successful kids wounded portion riding off-road vehicles — and information shows the bulk of the astir caller cases to onshore successful the ER weren't wearing helmets.

In the past 4 years, the Health Sciences Centre Children's Hospital successful Winnipeg has seen anyplace betwixt 80 and 100 kids injured riding those types of vehicles annually, and tends to spot the astir cases connected weekends implicit the summertime months, Dr. Lynne Warda said astatine a quality league hosted by Manitoba Public Insurance Wednesday.

"I enactment successful exigency and I deliberation each day, probably, this outpouring and going into summer, idiosyncratic [on the ER team] … is seeing an ATV injury," Warda told reporters astatine the Safety Services Manitoba grooming installation successful the agrarian municipality of St. Andrews.

"These are besides precise terrible injuries. As you tin imagine, a kid operating 1 of these machines, they are outsized and they are besides precise speedy. So the speed, the impact, the rollovers effect successful aggregate antithetic types of injuries."

Roughly 32 per cent of kids who amusement up to the infirmary with those types of injuries extremity up being hospitalized — astir 5 times higher than the hospitalization complaint for different kinds of injuries — and lone astir 34 per cent of them were wearing helmets, she said.

While helmets aren't perfect, Warda stressed they trim the accidental of a superior encephalon wounded by astir 50 per cent, meaning "a kid mightiness locomotion distant with a concussion alternatively than a bleed that needs an operation, oregon a skull fracture."

Though numbers are highest among teens and preteens, she said she's seen injuries successful overmuch younger kids too.

That includes a four-year-old who Warda said was riding an age-appropriate off-road vehicle, but went "catapulting into a fence" and ended up with superior interior injuries, which she said shows some the imaginable hazard and the request for big supervision, adjacent with vehicles meant for children.

Warda besides said she supports the Canadian Paediatric Society's caller proposal that kids should beryllium astatine slightest 16 years aged to thrust off-road vehicles.

"Think astir your tiny eight-year-old and whether they truly person the spot and also, developmentally, the accelerated decision-making that's needed, the judgment," she said. "It's similar driving a car, but I deliberation it's harder due to the fact that it's much carnal and they're not protected."

'Life tin alteration successful an instant'

Wednesday's quality league was held alongside Manitoba Public Insurance president and CEO Satvir Jatana, who stressed the value of looking beyond the statistic to "see the kids — the sons, the daughters — that are impacted by this. Their full beingness tin alteration successful an instant."

Jatana said the nationalist insurer has been partnering with the not-for-profit Safety Services Manitoba to present information presentations astir off-road conveyance usage crossed the state — which, successful the archetypal 3 months of this year, reached implicit 2,100 young Manitobans.

Terris Baran, roadworthy information programme manager astatine Safety Services Manitoba, said helium thinks mandatory grooming earlier using off-road vehicles could beryllium a affirmative step.

"It'd beryllium a large thought for everybody to person immoderate level of knowing earlier they get connected the machines," Baran said. "Ultimately, what I've seen implicit and implicit again is that erstwhile you speech to younker similar they matter, they respond."

Related injuries are expected to driblet somewhat this twelvemonth amid bans connected off-road conveyance usage due to the fact that of wildfire hazard successful definite areas, Warda said — but determination person inactive been cases of kids ending up successful the hospital.

The quality league came days aft 2 boys were sent to infirmary aft the inferior task conveyance they were driving was deed by a semi connected a Manitoba highway. RCMP said neither lad was wearing a seatbelt oregon a helmet.

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said those kinds of cases are reminders of "how important it is to enactment harmless retired connected the trails, and however rapidly the joyousness of the acquisition of being retired successful quality and connected 1 of these singular machines tin crook to tragedy." 

"A amusive day tin alteration successful an instant," Wiebe said astatine the quality conference, urging radical to deterioration helmets, guarantee vehicles lucifer riders' property and ability, and usage big supervision. 

"Your life, your safety, your aboriginal are much important than a situation oregon shortcut oregon thing that is unsafe to you."