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[GRAPHIC: The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour]
[GRAPHIC: Focus Killer Wheels?]
ANCHOR: Next tonight, our subject is safety, government regulation and the fate of the so-called ATV, or all-terrain vehicle. The Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission recently got manufacturers to agree to stop sales of the three-wheel version of these vehicles and to provide driver training. But critics say the plan doesn't go nearly far enough. They call the ATVs, "rolling death machines" and are pushing for a total recall of all vehicles. Manufacturers deny such charges, say the machines are fun and safe if used correctly. We'll be hearing a debate on how to regulate these vehicles in a moment, but first a background report from Kwame Holman.
KWAME HOLMAN: Five years ago, Frank Cusimano Jr., was thrown from a three-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. He suffered severe brain damage and today at 15, he has a vocabulary of just 40 words. Last week, after a five-month trial, a jury in San Diego was asked to decide whether the all-terrain vehicle was defective.
JUDGE: Was there a defect in the design of the 1981 Honda ATC 110? Answer, no.
KWAME HOLMAN: Frank is one of about 300,000 people who have been injured riding all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs, since 1982. Another 900 people have died in ATV accidents.
Frank had broken a number of safety rules. He was riding double. He wasn't wearing a helmet. And he was riding without adult supervision.
But Honda, the largest manufacturer of ATVs and the maker of the vehicle Frank was riding, says the potential for injury doesn't necessarily indicate a problem with the design of ATVs. Attorney Richard Bowman defended Honda in the Frank Cusimano case.
RICHARD BOWMAN: In a serious injury case, such as the Cusimano case, in which all sympathies would be expected to be on the part of this tragically injured young man, Honda is able to crisply demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with its product.
KWAME HOLMAN: Craig McClellan represented the Cusimano family.
CRAIG MCCLELLAN: I think that the, the Japanese manufacturers, which are 99% of the ATV market, have been extremely arrogant in their response to the problem. Their response has basically been, if we made it, it's not defective. It couldn't be defective. We will point the finger at everybody else, the parents, the children, or some third party.
KWAME HOLMAN: Honda doesn't deny that accidents, many of them serious, do happen. This professional driver may have discovered that while driving an ATV for a Honda commercial. Honda never aired these pictures, but the videotape was subpoenaed for the Cusimano trial. Still, Honda attorneys say they were successful at convincing a jury that ATVs are no more dangerous than similar recreational vehicles.
RICHARD BOWMAN: The comparison of ATVs to snowmobiles, to mini bikes and to trail bikes is that the injury levels are, for all practical purposes, substantially identical. There is almost no statistical significance between the risk of an injury among those four products. When you get to bicycles, the multiple of risk inherent in an hour of bicycle riding is a huge multiple greater.
CRAIG MCCLELLAN: If you were to conclude that a product is not defective, as this jury did, because there are other products that are just as dangerous or other activities that are more dangerous, then the only product that would ever be defective would be the most dangerous product in the world because every manufacturer would come into court and show evidence of other products or other activities that are more dangerous than the one it makes.
ANCHOR: That's a sample of the legal battle going on in California courts.