Statistics released by the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) show that All-Terrain Vehicles account for more hospital visits in Atlantic Canada than any other sport.
Several provinces saw cycling as the most common cause of sports injuries while ATVs caused the highest number of injuries in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“Across Canada what we saw was cycling as the top-ranked cause,” explained Agnita Pal, CIHI’s clinical administrative databases operations manager. “ATVs, however, were the second-highest reason for hospitalizations.”
In the Atlantic provinces, ATV incidents make up about one-third of total sport-related hospital visits.
ATVs are linked to 138 out of 439 hospital visits in New Brunswick, 92 out of 351 in Nova Scotia, 16 out of 77 in PEI and 97 out of 278 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
To compare, Quebec saw ATVs linked to just 619 of 4,343 total hospital visits; a number that works out to about one in seven.
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However, the New Brunswick All-Terrain Vehicle Federation (NBATVF) says the numbers are quite low when compared to the size of the province’s ATV community.
“Last year we had 52,000 registered ATVs but that’s just the ATV itself,” NBATVF General Manager Jacques Poirier said. “In most cases, people tend to ride two on the ATVs or, in some cases, they have what we know as a side-by-side, so you can either ride two or as much as six in the side-by-side.”
Poirier says that, as the sport continues to grow, they are dedicated to ensuring everyone riding an ATV is doing so safely. He believes providing proper education and strict safety measures will help them accomplish that task.
“We do offer an ATV safety course,” Poirier explained. “The other thing we do is tell the clubs to go out on the managed trails and make sure the trails are safe for the users and, if the users see something that should be reported, we always tell them: ‘please report it to the club,’ because it could be a possible danger for the users.”
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