Kymco joins euro ATV group
Author: Dealernews

The two-page spread in the May 2004 issue of People magazine couldn't be more damning. To one side of 10-year-old Kyle Rabe's tombstone stands his grieving parents--on the other is the ATV that killed him. The accompanying article corroborates the 1,000 negative words the picture is trumpeting.

That same month the CBS Evening News picked up the Rabe story, airing a two-part feature focusing on the seriousness of ATV- related child deaths, and laissez-faire government regulation of the ATV industry. The CBS report went so far as to quote a 100 percent increase in ATV-related child deaths since 1993, but failed to include corresponding figures such as estimated ATV sales in 1993 of 163,000 units vs. the 799,000 units sold in 2003--an increase of 389 percent.

People magazine said 119 of the 467 ATV-related deaths in 2001 were children. Of course any death is one death too many, but 119 ATV-related child deaths is not exactly the "slaughter" Dr. Gary Smith, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee, quotes in the article. In fact, it's only .02 percent of the estimated 729,000 ATVs sold that year.

"I worked with the People magazine journalist for six weeks, and that's the way the story came out," says Discover Today's Motorcycling communications manager Mike Mount.