The Dirt: Old Dogs Can Learn

Features — By John Prusak on August 6, 2009 at 12:00 pm

“Had you ever heard of that?”

The whispered question came from my neighbor and friend Brent, a longtime ATV owner and rider, during an ATV Safety Training course that we were sitting through with our 12-year-old sons.

I looked back at him and shrugged, and the instructor kept talking to the group of boys and girls in the classroom portion of their training, which is required youth to legally ride an ATV on public trails in our state.

There was a lot of information in that class that anybody who rides an ATV could learn, but nobody — especially guys – likes to be told how to do things that they “should” be able to do. If something as simple as asking for directions is a challenge to our manhood, what are the odds that your average red-blooded American male would ever admit that there’s something he could learn about how to handle his ATV? As the old saying goes, “Somewhere between slim and none, and Slim just left town.”

Personally, I also think our aversion to absorbing such information is affected by the fact that, in this hyper-sensitive, super-litigious society of ours, owner’s manuals and warning labels have border on the ridiculous. Have you ever read all of the labels/decals on a new ATV? Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good information there, but there are also enough warnings about explosions, rollovers, severe injuries and death that, if you took every one of them seriously, you’d probably never throw a leg over the darned thing.

It’s certainly not limited to ATVs. You wouldn’t ever go around a cloverleaf in an SUV or pickup truck if you took the warning label on the sun visor seriously.

My favorite? I recently stumbled across an owner’s manual for a bowl my wife had purchased — yes, a bowl with an owner’s manual. There were all sorts of warnings, including descriptions of what might happen if you handle the bowl when it’s hot.

“Hey Julie,” I called out. “No wonder that Pampered Chef crap costs so much – they pay a team of lawyers to tell customers if they grab something that’s really hot, burns may occur to the fingers!”

You can’t buy a three-ring binder or a screwdriver set anymore that doesn’t come with an owner’s manual featuring language about what might happen if you pinch your finger or jam the product into your eye socket.

So yes, we’ve all become numb to the legalese that’s permeated our society. Yet there we were, a longtime motorsports writer and tester, and my neighbor who’s owned ATVs for the past 13 years, learning valuable information at our kids’ ATV safety training course.

Most of the stuff covered in the class was readily available to us. Between the owner’s manual, the safety CD/DVD that comes with every new quad purchase and the Department of Natural Resources booklet that’s available when renewing an ATV registration, there’s actually a ton of very useful information around — once you get past the legal gobbledygook.

Ask yourself — do you know what a K-turn is, and when you’re supposed to use one? Do you check the brake and throttle cables before you go riding? Do you know all of the rules in your state regarding off-highway vehicle use? This weekend, take some time to look through your owner’s manual, and watch the video if you still have it. Yes, you can skim through the legal copy, but there actually is some good information in there that could make your ATV riding adventures more fun and, yes, more safe.