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Catching
drunks, slowing snowmachines cut deaths
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Department of Natural Resources Warden Michael Sealander stops
a snowmobile on a trail near St. Germain, Wis., in late February.
Wardens give field sobriety tests and warn drivers not to
go too fast or blast through stop signs. (JEFFREY PHELPS /
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
A beer advertisement sign blows in the stiff breeze as snowmobiles
whiz by on trails near St. Germain, Wis., in February. A vast
majority of snowmobile deaths in the state have been attributed
to alcohol abuse. (JEFFREY PHELPS / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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By RICHARD MAUER
Daily News reporter
In the northern New Hampshire town of Colebrook, Dr.
Steven Olson, emergency room surgeon at Upper Connecticut Valley
Hospital, got fed up with what he saw as a winter epidemic of snowmobile
injuries and death. In 1998, he decided to do something about it.
Working with state medical examiner Thomas Andrew and New Hampshire
snowmobile safety coordinator Anne Hewitt, Olson drew up a plan
to study each death that coming winter. There had been 10 the previous
year, Andrew said. By autopsying each body and analyzing the circumstances
of the accident, they thought they might spot patterns that could
lead to safer machine design and different operator behavior.
"Our aim was to relive the '50s with what they did with cars,"
Andrew said.
Then, he added, "our plan got snuffed." Before they could begin
their studies, the New Hampshire snowmobile death rate plummeted.
In a telephone interview, Andrew attributed the decline to another
effort that began as a result of the 1997 deaths: strict enforcement
of New Hampshire's snowmachine laws. Capt. Tim Acerno, a law enforcement
officer with the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game and an
avid snowmobiler, had decided there was something he could do.
Acerno thought deaths and injuries had less to do with snowmobile
design than with the behavior of operators. They drove drunk or
too fast, or they let children run the machines without supervision.
Nine of the 10 deaths in 1997 were alcohol-related, he said. Speed,
especially at night, ran a close second to booze as a factor.
With backing from a state-sponsored safety committee that included
representatives from the governor's office, Legislature and landowner
groups, Acerno stepped up patrols. He put the state's 49 fish and
wildlife officers - who normally don't do much during winter other
than check the licenses of ice fishermen or investigate poaching
- on the trails on snowmobiles.
Officers stationed themselves with radar guns to enforce the 45
mph speed limit. When they caught people speeding or driving recklessly,
they wrote citations. They got the approval of local judges to set
up sobriety checkpoints on popular lakes and trails, stopping every
snowmobiler to test for alcohol. In Colebrook - Dr. Olson's town
- the game wardens issued 300 snowmobile tickets in one three-week
period, Acerno said.
"We want the people to think that around the corner there's a green
uniform," he said.
When the program started, Acerno said, he was an unpopular figure.
Acerno said local businesses complained, "You're driving all our
customers away."
But that soon changed, he added, as new, more family-oriented crowds
began showing up in New Hampshire.
"The people we chased to Maine are the ones who came up with a
case of beer, trashed the room, wouldn't eat any meals," Acerno
said. "The ones that stayed are families. They have breakfast at
the lodges, have them box up a lunch, have dinner, and when they
leave, their towels are neatly folded in the room."
While there are still accidents - a couple of months ago a 14-year-old
boy on one of the most powerful machines available collided head-on
with a 12-year-old girl, who suffered massive brain injuries - deaths
have nearly bottomed out. Last year, there were three, this year
one, and it wasn't alcohol-related, Acerno said.
Back in Colebrook, Olson is still seeing injuries and remains a
campaigner like some other physicians in the north country who patch
accident victims together.
Olson said his activism has been less than popular with the boosters
of winter tourism in his economically depressed region and some
New Hampshire snowmobile clubs.
"Most of our economy is snowmobiles," he said. "Everybody's kind
of against any kind of statement that maybe they're not safe."
While New Hampshire's helmet law appears to hold down the number
of head injuries, he said, other injuries have been dreadful, even
as deaths have declined.
"Almost all of our trauma is from snowmobiling," Olson said. "The
pattern we're seeing is primarily people are getting airborne and
landing and having pretty massive trauma, usually chest, abdomen
and lower extremity fractures."
Sometimes, he said, snowmobilers are "launched into trees" when
they round turns too fast.
"You have a surprising number of head-on collisions," he added.
"The lakes up here are big enough that when people are on them,
they lose their reference points. They don't realize closing speed
and direction as easily as if they had some reference point. You
can see these accidents in the middle of a perfectly open lake,
and you wonder, how could that be? Just by chance alone, they should
have missed."
Last year, Olson said, a snowmobiler speeding in a field apparently
mistook a row of markers for a solid barrier.
"He swerved his sled, became airborne and broke himself in two,"
the doctor said. "I've never seen anything like that. It looked
like he fell off a 100-story building."
Amazingly, Olson said, the dead man's skin withstood the force.
It was the only thing holding his torso together, he said.
With more than five years in Colebrook, Olson began to see patterns
in injuries that seemed to relate to machine design.
"The machine is inherently difficult to control unless it's going
in a straight line," Olson said. "If you turn it too sharply, it's
going to roll over. We get a few injuries when the machine and person
roll together. That's when you get fractured pelvises."
Sometimes, he said, snowmobilers would keep their feet under the
engine cowling for warmth. Then, Olson said, "when they hit something,
they'd launch up and suffer a spiral fracture of the lower leg.
You'd also see a broken femur or hip because their knee was sticking
out of the machine and they'd hit their knee as they were going
by something."
Handlebars that failed to break away on impact caused upper leg
injuries in drivers launched out of their seats, he said. Other
riders were impaled on the bars.
Olson said he tried contacting snowmachine manufacturers to discuss
safety.
"They just didn't return my e-mails," he said.
He spoke by phone with the national manufacturer's association
in Michigan.
"I asked them what safety testing do they do," he said. "They don't
do anything except drop a weight on the gas tank and see if it cracked.
I asked if they used crash dummies. They laughed."
Tom Tiller, the chief executive of Polaris Industries, one of four
snowmobile manufacturers, said Olson never spoke with him and his
home number is listed in the Minneapolis telephone directory.
Tiller agreed that crash dummies aren't used in testing but wasn't
sure that such controlled testing would be beneficial with snowmobiles
because of the varied terrain they operate in.
"Our products are very safe when people follow the rules," he said,
blaming most accidents on alcohol.
Acerno's influence has begun to be felt in Alaska.
Last summer, the Alaska State Snowmobile Association invited him
to Anchorage to help set up a training program. While Acerno certified
some instructors, the association doesn't yet have the money to
run a program, said Kevin Hite, vice president of the organization.
Hite hopes Alaska's snowmobilers could head off new laws by improving
safety themselves, but he also would like to see troopers step up
enforcement of Alaska's laws against drunken snowmachining.
Troopers and Fish and Wildlife Protection officers say they lack
the manpower to do many patrols and would have difficulty enforcing
drunken driving laws in remote areas.
* Reporter Richard Mauer can be reached at rmauer@adn.com.
©2000
Anchorage Daily News
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