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OK, my son has outgrown his battery powered 4 wheeler. He is now 8 years old and I'm soliciting Freeper advice about moving up to a gas powered youth quad. I don't have too much to spend, so it will probably be a used one. Any advice on preferred make/model. Also, are there any modifications I can make to the quad to make it more safe? I have a fear of a flip over. Many thanks, Maverick

Get ready for a firefighting vehicle that might have arrived from your old Saturday morning GI Joe cartoons. Yanko has showcased an ATV design by Liam Ferguson that can carry remotely-operated water cannons and a two-person crew into the heart of a raging blaze, and emerge unscathed. Firefighters currently rely on modified Toyota Landcruisers or other utility vehicles for doing recon on hotspots. Those work well in a pinch for navigating rough terrain, but carry only a meager water supply of 500 liters and cannot survive a burnover when flames suddenly sweep over the area. The proposed Amatoya vehicle...

Click to watch on You TubeWASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2009 -- Embedded above is a b-roll video of the ATV MRAP in Afghanistan. Scenes include the vehicle driving through the base and interviews. (Courtesy Video, American Forces Network Afghanistan. Length: 00:01:38.)

With all the exciting news this summer of upcoming new plug-in hybrids and EVs, it was easy to overlook a fascinating new vehicle that almost none of us will ever drive but will have a significant impact on each and every one of our lives. That vehicle is the Oshkosh M-ATV. These clever, capable vehicles were designed, tested, approved and put into production in record time, with the first of them hitting the ground in Afghanistan this week (check out the video below). Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters that at least 6,644 of the M-ATVs would go...

Former Congressman Bill Orton, a political maverick who served three terms as a Democrat in one of Utah's most conservative districts, has died. The 60-year-old died in an all-terrain vehicle accident Saturday afternoon at the Little Sahara Sand Dunes, the Juab County sheriff said. "He was riding out on the sand and went off a very steep sand dune, and when he impacted the bottom, the front end of the four-wheeler flipped on top of him, injuring him," Sheriff Alden Orme told the Deseret News late Saturday. "He was alone at the time of the accident. Another ATV rider passed...

Kahlua was a sweet pony who gently carried children on his back and was always the first in his pasture to trot up to and greet visitors. On Wednesday his owner was horrified to find the blind pony dead in his pasture in Shenango Township, Mercer County. Large pieces of skin were missing from both back legs, and a bone in one hind leg was broken.

Polaris Industries Inc. has completed first production of and received orders from the US Department of Defense for its newest military vehicle, the MV800 4X4 ATV. The MV800 is Polaris’ first vehicle featuring a new 760cc, 30kW (40 hp) twin-cylinder 4-stroke engine utilizing a newly developed air-assisted direct-injection combustion system.

CHLORIDE, Ariz. - Two girls riding an all-terrain vehicle fell into a mine shaft, killing one while the other remained trapped overnight, authorities said Sunday. The 10-year-old girl was pulled out in the morning with injuries. A rope team descended into the vertical shaft, where the 13-year-old girl was found dead, sheriff's spokeswoman Sandy Edwards said. Efforts were under way to remove her body. Edwards did not know how far down the girls had fallen and did not know whether the girls' relationship. The pair went missing about 7 p.m. Saturday and never came back. Officials discovered they were the...

Driven by an increase in imports from China, U.S. and Japanese producers have taken the unusual position of asking Congress to approve legislation mandating safety standards for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), which consumer groups have long targeted as dangerous. “It’s somewhat extraordinary for our industry to be asking that standards be made mandatory,” said David Murray of Yamaha, which employs over 3,000 people in the U.S. making ATVs. He and others point to the fact that new ATV suppliers from China and Taiwan have not signed voluntary agreements adopted by companies like Yamaha and Honda to meet certain safety standards. “The...

With Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) due to deliver supplies to the International Space Station this fall, NASA has begun training U.S. civil servants to help trouble-shoot if needed during what is supposed to be a largely Russian-European operation. Ordinarily, those problem-solving duties would fall primarily on NASA's contractors. But U.S. export controls governing the exchange of technical data have complicated matters for NASA and its partners as they prepare for ATV's debut. NASA asked the U.S. State Department in December for some space station-specific relief from U.S. International Traffic in Arms regulations that govern many space-related products and...

"A 2-year-old boy was killed in Charles County over the weekend when the child-size all-terrain vehicle he was operating overturned on him, according to the Charles County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office said the boy was operating a Baja Wilderness 50 four-wheeler, which is designed for children 6 to 12 years old and equipped with a remote cutoff switch. When the boy's mother turned the ATV off by the remote, the vehicle stopped but the front wheels turned, causing it to overturn on the boy, sheriff's deputies said. He was wearing a helmet." "According to the company's Web site, the...

Richard Beardall is getting exactly what he wanted: a trespassing ticket from federal land managers for ignoring the rules and riding his ATV on a closed road in the San Rafael Swell. Beardall, three other ATV riders and a Jeep, moved a 10-foot barricade near an old uranium mine and made a half-mile roundtrip along the access road to the Muddy River on Saturday. The Bureau of Land Management closed the area to recreational vehicles in 1993 due to riparian damage, said Price, Utah-based BLM manager Roger Bankert. Beardall, president of the Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance knows that, but...

Thales UK offers to sell sub-systems for India's N-subs Press Trust of India Glasgow, July 9, 2006 British defence majors are expressing readiness to export frontline weapons technology to India and 'Thales UK' has even offered to sell some critical sub-systems for New Delhi's top secret nuclear submarine project. "Here we have developed a non-hull penetrating technology to remove cumbersome periscopes from submarines. And we are ready to offer this technology for India's upgraded Kilo class submarines and its Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV)," Peter Mcbride, Director Naval exports of the company said. Thales is making these non-penetrating hull masts and...

No room for mistakes in a nuclear Navy Shishir Gupta With only two years to go before the Indian Navy is to transform itself to a blue water Navy—an elite club comprising mostly of the P5 countries—a string of incidents give clue to how unprepared the force is for it.Consider the following: • Last month, the sonar dome—an anti-submarine device—of the guided missile warship Talwar, got seriously damaged after the ship’s anchor was accidentally dropped on it. • In April, missile corvette Prahar sank after colliding with merchant ship Rajiv Gandhi. • In December 2005, a speeding INS Trishul, another...

BREMEN, Germany (AFP) - Engineers formally handed over the Columbus science module, the European Space Agency's biggest contribution to the problem-dogged International Space Station (ISS). The 13-tonne lab was transferred to ESA at a ceremony attended in this northern German city, where a small army of technicians had spent four years fitting out its shell with control, communications and research equipment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the scheme as a "fascinating example" of European cooperation in hi-tech. Columbus, in gestation for 10 years and costing around a billion euros (1.25 billion dollars), is designed to enable European scientists to carry...

Fatal shooting pits tribe against police The Ramapoughs call it murder. Authorities say it was justified. By Wayne Parry Associated Press MAHWAH, N.J. - The gathering started, as it does each spring, with members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian tribe meeting for a cookout and a day in the Bergen County woods, celebrating the warming weather and the beauty of the earth. The April 1 outing ended with one of the tribe members mortally wounded, shot three times by a state park police officer who had told them that they were not allowed to ride their all-terrain vehicles in the...

As many of you know, I have twin boys - they just turned 13 last week. They are good boys with good judgment. They know the ways of the outdoors, shoot and hunt safely, they have snowmobiling experience and they understand the meaning of family and God, etc. But, and I'm sure every parent knows what I mean, they are boys. Well, between my father and me, we own about 225 acres of timber in northern Wisconsin and the "Lando" boys love to visit the rustic cabin that we have on our property. Now they want an ATV - a...

A North Pole policeman shot and killed a man on a four-wheeler early Sunday after the man allegedly attempted to hit the officer with the ATV. Few details of the shooting were available Monday, but according to a press release issued by the North Pole Police Department, the officer shot and killed the driver of the ATV "to keep from being run over." Hank Thomas Walker, 49, was pronounced dead at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital around 4 a.m. The officer, whose name was not released, encountered the man on the ATV at approximately 3:25 a.m. Sunday when he saw him speeding...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Children younger than 8 years old would be prohibited from operating all-terrain vehicles, while older kids would have to drive age-appropriate motorbikes, in a bill given final Senate approval Monday night. With 183,000 ATVs in use, North Carolina is now one of five states with essentially no operating restrictions for the machines. Under the bill sent to the House without additional debate on a vote of 31-15, children from ages 8 to 15 only would be allowed to operate child-sized ATVs under an adult's close supervision. These machines are either battery-powered or are equipped with governors to...

Ohio dairy farmer Frank Sutliff was grinding cattle feed when he saw them again: all-terrain vehicles shredding his alfalfa fields. ADVERTISEMENT When he shouted to the riders over the engine whine that they were trespassing, they smashed him over the head, he said. "I went down, and they just started in on me … hit me, kicked me, broke my leg," said Sutliff, 46. "I crawled into the truck, drove back to the house and dialed 911." One man paid a $100 trespassing fine. Another spent five days in jail. All denied wrongdoing. Across rural America, angry skirmishes are increasingly...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Senate committee members wrestled with when it may be appropriate and safe for a child to operate an all-terrain vehicle as they took up legislation on Tuesday to regulate use of the machines.(snip) The bill written by Sen. Bill Purcell, D-Scotland, and backed by the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force would bar children under 12 years of age from operating an ATV. Children from 12 to 15 could only drive certain ATVs with engine capacities of up to 90 cubic centimeters.(snip)The bill also would require all drivers to complete a safety course by October 2006. Anyone...

A Jordanian business man, Fawaz Zureikat, whose name was revealed yesterday as an allegedly business intermediary between Labour member of Parliament George Galloway and Saddam Hussain's regime, has been detained in Amman. George Galloway MP, a familiar face to Arab public, is at the top of the news once again, but this time as having been, allegedly, on the pay-roll of Saddam Hussain's regime, at least since 2000. The allegations, claimed to have been uncovered in "secret documents" found by a reporter in two charred boxes at the first floor of the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad are many and...

Cops blamed for ATV crash Fred Musante, Editor December 29, 2004 A 21-year-old New Haven man who led Hamden police on a high-speed chase on his all-terrain vehicle before crashing into a utility pole last summer wants the town to pay his medical bills. Britt Martin, of 75 George Street, claims that Officer Stephen DeGrand and four other unidentified officers were responsible for his injuries because they violated a Police Department policy to discontinue high-speed pursuits when the risk exceeds the need for immediate apprehension. Continuing the police pursuit was "reckless, unnecessary, and unwarranted," Martin's complaint said. Police Chief Robert...

FORGET stuffy hatchbacks and people carriers, DVD2004 isn’t your run-of-the-mill motor show. Packed with hundreds of stands, the exhibition, held at the MoD’s Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedford, boasted some of the most exciting vehicles around. And 18-year-old tanker driver Pte Lucy “Speedy” Speed, 27 Regiment RLC, was itching for a test drive. Full throttle: Pte Lucy Speed takes the plunge in a Prowler All Terrain Vehicle at DVD 2004 Prowler All Terrain VehicleFirst up, Pte Speed jumped on the four-wheel drive American Prowler ATV (on previous page). A cross between a high-powered quad bike and buggy, the 700cc Prowler...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of people killed or injured using all-terrain vehicles is rising, the government said Tuesday. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that 113,900 people were injured severely enough in 2002 to be taken to a hospital emergency room, up from 110,100 in 2001. In addition, 467 people died in ATV-related accidents in 2001, up from 446 in 2000, the latest available figures, the report said. Children under 16 years old had 37,100 serious injuries in 2002, up from 34,300 in 2001, and more than any other age group. ATVs have three or four wheels with...

<p>DOUGLAS, Ga. (AP) &#8212; Volunteer firefighter David Varnedore rushed to the scene of a car accident prepared to help strangers in need. Then he came across the body of his own son. And then the body of his elder daughter.</p>

It should have been one of the best days of Coranne Megan Nelson's short life. She and her closest friends were celebrating her 14th birthday Saturday evening at the Nelson home in Wray, a small community in South Georgia's Coffee County. Instead, Coranne and four other children died in a bizarre crash when the off-road vehicle they were riding was hit by a car. A sixth child is clinging to life in a Savannah hospital. And a young woman's life has been changed forever. Coranne had taken the other five children riding on a four-wheeler on a rural two-lane road...

WASHINGTON -- Advocacy groups called Tuesday for a ban on young children riding all-terrain vehicles, saying a surge in deaths and injuries show the industry's efforts to enforce safety rules have failed. Representatives from consumer, children's and environmental groups cited statistics showing injuries to ATV riders under 16 have nearly doubled in the last eight years. "Self-regulation by the ATV industry has led to larger and faster ATVs and more children being killed and injured," said Rachel Weintraub, assistant general counsel to the Consumer Federation of America. ATVs are motorized machines that can traverse off-road terrain. While popular for recreation,...