ATV Instructor Sums It Up: "Wear your gear and get trained"

Kevin Frantum has taught the basics of ATV safety to more than a thousand Marines at Camp Pendleton during the past few years. A couple things have become very clear to him. "Everybody thinks they can drive a car, ride a motorcycle and ride an ATV," he says. When he watches them get behind the handlebars, though, it's a whole other story.

"People start out thinking ATVs are toys," he explains. "They think ATVs won't tip over, for example. They don't seem to have much respect for them." Frantum, who also teaches advanced off-road courses off-base on weekends as a business, says that it isn't just kids who need an attitude readjustment, but adults, as well. "Anything that will do thirty-five miles per hour or better over terrain is something you need to learn how to handle. Many of those ATVs have 400cc-plus engines, but people don't look at them like high-horsepower, high-performance vehicles." Part of the lack of respect may derive from the fact that you don't need a separate license for ATVs.

Yet, he says, lots of ATV riders seem content to learn by trial and error. The errors aren't always minor. An avid and experienced rider, Frantum has seen plenty of mishaps. He often rides in the desert and has been first on the scene a few times. When the helmet comes off, he can always tell when it's a local service member. "I had a young Marine almost hit my brand new camper once," he recalls. The Marine's ATV skidded to a halt twenty feet from the camper, but the Marine broke his collarbone.

Frantum saw a teenaged girl seriously injure her back on a recent Sunday. "She came by and caught a rut," he explains. "Most people get back up. She just lay there." Frantum, who always carries a cell phone, called for an ambulance. His wife, an instructor and a licensed vocational nurse, is well-equipped to tend injured riders until the ambulance arrives.

The causes of mishaps? Excessive speed and "just plain carelessness." He doesn't think terrain is necessarily the problem. "You just need the right techniques for the terrain," he says. He has had a couple himself, the most recent when he stalled on a steep hill. As always, his protective gear paid off.

"A lot of riders test their limits," he says, and sometimes that test goes too far. "Or complacency sets in. They think, 'I've ridden this trail a hundred times.'" But terrain changes. Ruts appear or get deeper. Another common error is to slack off on the PPE when the temperatures start to climb. But he insists that six things are mandatory and not weather-dependent: helmet, goggles, gloves, long pants, long sleeves and boots that cover the ankle.

He is puzzled by the trial-and-error attitude, especially because ATV manufacturers offer rebate incentives, ranging from $50 to $150 and free training, if new owners will get training.

The ATV safety class is four and a half hours on the range, punctuated by several 10-to-15-minute lectures. He teaches the basics: getting on, starting, turning, stopping, crossing obstacles and hills. He uses 4-by-4s as the obstacles. In all these exercises we are teaching correct techniques. After the class, he says, "A lot of the students tell me they learned quite a bit."

If you haven't taken a class, he can sum up his experience in six words: "Wear your gear and get trained." Riding ATVs is a lot of fun. Wrecking them and getting hurt isn't.

Chart showing Navy ATV mishaps, 2002-2006

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