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Fed
up with death
Minnesota
toughens laws after gruesome accidents
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Eight-year-old Chris Kolb places a cross Jan. 19, 1997 at
a memorial set up in front of his friend Joshua Renken's home.
Renken, 10, was killed by a snowmobiler while the two boys
were building a snow fort in front of Kolb's home. The cross
reads "Joshua we will all miss you." (ALLEN SMITH / Minneapolis
Star Tribune)
Jan Schlosser of Wyoming, Minn., was one of several parents
who pleaded with Minnesota lawmakers in February of 1997 for
stricter laws for snowmobilers. Schlosser's daughter, Stacy,
was struck and killed by a snowmobile traveling at a high
rate of speed. (DAVID BREWSTER / Minneapolis Star Tribune)
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By RICHARD MAUER
Daily News reporter
For the first half of the 1990s, snowmobile deaths
in each of the upper Midwest states averaged about 20 per season.
Then, as snowmobiling grew ever more popular and the machines ever
faster, the Midwest also experienced several great snow seasons.
The death tolls rose in 1995, then leaped in 1996. Wisconsin had
34 dead, Minnesota 32, and Michigan 45.
Officials and the public in all of those states urged reform, but
the call was loudest in Minnesota. Two particularly horrible deaths
there fueled public sentiment.
Just before Christmas in 1996, four teenage girls were walking
down a suburban street north of the Twin Cities in broad daylight.
They heard a snowmobile approaching and moved toward the side of
the street.
The snowmobile, driving erratically, crossed the road and struck
Stacey Schlosser, 15, killing her. The machine didn't stop until
the driver hit a power pole a short time later. He was drunk, said
Lt. Norm Floden, a conservation officer with the Minnesota Department
of Natural Resources.
The driver was charged with criminal negligence.
Three weeks later, 10-year-old Joshua Renken was playing on a snow
berm near his home in rural Sherburne County in central Minnesota
when he was hit by a snowmobile going about 45 mph on the wrong
shoulder of the road. It crested the berm, struck Renken and killed
him, Floden said. The 20-year-old driver of that snowmobile was
drunk, Floden added.
"The Legislature said, 'Enough is enough; let's do something,'
" said conservation officer Jeff Thielen, Minnesota's snowmobile
safety training chief.
The parents of Renken and Schlosser became strong advocates for
new laws, giving emotional testimony before the Legislature, Thielen
said.
Lawmakers made snowmobiling while intoxicated a crime that could
cost riders their driver's licenses, required forfeiture of the
snowmachine as the penalty for anyone caught fleeing an officer,
and stipulated mandatory snowmobile training for every rider born
after Dec. 31, 1979. The date coincided with the cutoff for hunter
safety training.
Minnesota conservation officers stepped up patrols to enforce the
state's existing speed limit of 50 mph on public lands and waterways.
"We've had a real aggressive snowmobile task force that's gotten
a lot of media exposure around the state," Thielen said. "About
10 to a dozen officers work special events where there's a high
concentration of snowmobiles. These guys will go out and write 10
to 20 SWIs (snowmobiling while intoxicated) on a weekend and another
40 to 50 tickets for other violations."
Minnesota even uses aircraft to catch speeders.
"I like to think that it's having an effect," Thielen said. While
he believes poor snow may have contributed to a drop to 10 fatalities
this winter, he believes the new laws and stepped-up enforcement
have helped.
"Wisconsin didn't have a lot of snow this year, and they had 38
fatalities," Thielen said. "Wisconsin doesn't have a speed limit,
doesn't have some of the cumulative operating under the influence
(laws) we have, and I don't think they've put the emphasis on enforcement
that we have."
Watching from neighboring Wisconsin, Thomas Thoresen, assistant
administrator for enforcement for the Department of Natural Resources,
said Thielen may not be far off but Wisconsin's laws are catching
up. Without the galvanized public opinion that followed the children's
deaths in Minnesota, it's taken longer in Wisconsin, Thoresen said.
"We've got everyone in agreement now. We're going to double sheriff
patrols and conservation patrol enforcement in the state," he said.
* Reporter Richard Mauer can be reached at rmauer@adn.com.
©2000
Anchorage Daily News
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