A life lost and Morons

I originally wrote this back in the early summer, after a tragic accident in our area. Then, as some things do, it got lost in the shuffle that is my summer. Here it is, and if you change the word ATV to snowmobile, it’s for the upcoming season also.
Why would you let an 8 year old drive one of those? What kind of moron lets a kid that age drive something like that? That was the first thing I asked my daughter about a tragic accident last week. A man, watching his girl friend’s children, and also watching another friend’s house, let his son take his two sisters for a ride on an ATV owned by the house owner. Not a ‘quad’, but the kind with a bench seat for two people and an open bed behind.
The boy is 8. One sister is 10, the other was 3.
Yes, sadly I said was. They had the vehicle in another neighbor’s driveway, somehow it hit a tree and overturned, throwing the toddler out and landing on her. My daughter responded, with our rescue squad. They did everything they could. Nobody could have done anything. Being on the steps of the hospital would not have helped. A 3 year old child is dead. The obituary called her ‘our little angel’. Yet she was not precious enough for them to use some sense and not put her in the seat with a too young, not trained enough driver. Nothing has been said about seat belts, but there are only two on the vehicle, and there were three of them.
In our region there have been I think four deaths of young people/teenagers on various types of ATV’s in recent months. I went to one several years ago, a man in maybe his 30’s, married, couple of kids, out riding with his buddies on their quads. He always wore a helmet. You could see where it hit the tree. You could see where the quad hit the tree. In between those marks you could see where his face hit the tree. And when his wife called a couple of weeks after the accident to talk to someone in the squad about the accident, if the outcome could have been any different than leaving her a widow, guess who got to talk to her.
These are not toys, people! These machines are built for adults, with adult size steering wheels, adult size pedals, at adult length reach from the adult size seat to these. Not an 8 year old child’s reach, an adult’s reach. And yet anyone under the age of 16 can ride one, if on their own property and supervised. This time it wasn’t their own machine, or their own property, although they were allegedly supervised.
And now a man has to live the rest of his life knowing that his permission killed a ‘little angel’. An 8 year old boy has to grow up and live the rest of his life knowing he killed his little sister. Responders have to live with knowing they could not do anything to save this ‘little angel’. Our crew had to have a critical incident debriefing to help them resolve this fact. The little angel will not grow up to have a little angel of her own.
These are not toys, people! They are machines, made to be driven by adults, who will still have their own share of unfortunate and tragic mishaps. So, please, don’t take the chance of making someone else go through what this man, this boy, this family, these responders, all of the people affected, are going through. Don’t be a moron. Don’t let kids play with adult vehicles like this. Save a life. We’ll all thank you.