My wife and I received two Bombardier Outlander 330’s as an anniversary gift this past weekend. Prior to this our only motor sports exposure was to riding street motor cycles for 6 years before our children were born.

We would like to use these as a family activity and have trails on private property directly behind our house that are under power lines, around fields, through woods, etc. These are horse trails that are no longer used by the owners. I have secured permission from all of the land owners to ride on these trails and they are tame at best, but amount to about a 1.5 hour round trip ride at a slow to moderate pace.

We have two children ages 3 and 6 that went on a ride with us this past weekend and several things became apparent or raised concerns. Both children were equipped with and wearing DOT approved full face helmets with full shields. They were seated in front of my wife and I and were holding on to the inner most part of the handles.

1) I did not like having the childs hands on the grips, this made my holding on to them difficult using the outer porting and gave the kids access to the thumb throttle.
Is there a L shapped add on grip that anyone knows of that might be mounted to the bars, so that they have something to hold on to with out any interference with operation?

2) We measured their heads and purchased the appropriate size helmets for them, but they look so darn big on them. It seems with the added weight that their little necks have a lot of work to do. Is there a foam collar I should be using, either attached to the helmet or chin to prevent excessive motion, or my concern keep them from breaking their necks. It just seems something as simple as climbing a small log would result in their chin guard in the handlebars or the back of the helmet hitting my chin guard.

3) Placement of child on the vehicle. Is it bette to ride with a child in front of or behind the operator? It would seem I have more control of the child in front but at the same time would interfere more with the safe operation of the vehicle. I was looking into various restraint and seating systems and it seems there is very little infor on this with regards to ATV’s and children.
A) Had a couple of dealers suggest a Koplan Rear cargo bag with integrated seat and strapping the child onto the vehicle. This is not something I will consider as, if there were a need to vacate the vehicle (e.g. a lateral roll over) the child would remain with the vehicle and be crushed.

B) Front restraint harness: The only one I was able to locate was the “Sno-Pal” http://corneys1.tripod.com/sledpalsite/id2.html This model would allow the children to see what was going on and enjoy the ride more, but does this increase risk of injury?

C) Rear restraint harness: The only unit I was able to locate was the Child riding belt. http://www.childridingbelt.com/enginstrcen.htm as this one has a foam collar it would seem to address my concern #2, but this also places the child behind the adult so that they are more just “along for the ride” Is this the safer place to have them ride?
OR… Is all of the above irrelevant and should children this age just not be on these machines at all. Please understand, both my wife and I skydive and scuba dive. Statistically we are more likely to die in our car than any other type of activity we participate in. What we are trying to assess is, that if parents exercise common sense and ride with caution, is this a reasonable sport for small children to partake in, and if so what is the safest way to go about it?

Thank you all who reply to this post.

 

I'll try to answer this as best as I can.
Safety equipment for what you are talking about doing.
1, A good helmet, Just because it is DOT approved does not make it a good helmet. You really need to look for snell approval.
2, Get a chest protector, Even when riding with you, a chest protector can help if the need arises.
3, Put a neck roll on the chest protector, A football neck roll works fine.

Riding
1. Put the little one up front. They can see what is going on and they also will learn how to ride believe it or not, just from watching what you do.
2. Talk to them as you ride and ask them with route to take to get over this hill or around that rock. If possible do it as you are approaching the obsticale so they will learn to think ahead and look ahead.
3. If you put them in back they can't see anything and will try to see around you and fall off.
4. Don't strap them in or to anything. you want them to be able to get away if they have too. IE Jump or roll.
5. Remember that it does not take any skill to ride a atv. None. That is until you push the machine or get in a situation. Learn the machine, take the time to go to a training course. Most people get hurt on ATV's because they think they know it all until a situation happens and they just lose it.

Have fun and we hope you have a great time in the woods and on the trails!

 

Good advice, Tommy.. and I can't stress the safety equipment enough.

My daughter was involved in what looked like a horrible wreck on her quad the other day... some of teh safety gear didn't make it through the wreck, but all did its job in protecting her. She ended up with a fractured wrist and elbow... had it not been for her properly sized safety gear, I'm certian that she would have suffered serious back/neck/head injuries. To be safe, she was kept from moving until an ambulance arrived, and they took her to the hospital on a back board, but she could ahve probably walked off (in some pain). Along with her Helmet, goggles, chest protector, football neck roll, football mouth piece, kidney belt, riding jersey and pants, and riding boots, we will be adding knee/shin guards and elbow/arm gurads to her safety gear before she races again.

Bundle the kids up in the gear... and take an ATV safety/riding course... I've been on ATC/ATV and dirtbikes since I was 4, and with my last quad purchase I took the included safety course... it's good to get a refresher and I even picked up some better riding habbits.

Bryce

 

Some good tips from the other guys.I would be concerned about the 3 year olds helmet.Make sure it is the lightest helmet you can find.Our doctor recommended we not use a helmet on our son unitil he was at least 4 as she didn't feel his neck was strong enough for the weight of a normal helmet.I would get a very light wieght open face helmet as these are usually a little lighter than a full face.The harness that attaches the child to you but in front of you should work well.Keep the little one close enough to your body to help support the childs head and take it easy over any rough stuff.I generally get the little ones to put there hands on top of mine if there is no place thats good on the handlebars.I would recommend having them in front of you until they are too big for you to ride safely anymore.Then its time for thier own[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

The harnesses were here when I got home from work yesterday... both kids wanted to go for a ride, so a quick dinner and fitting and off we went for an hour.

Child harness is a center panel with 3 sets of attaching points and 1 set of attached straps and another "optional set"
Center panel covers the sternum of the child and the main straps start at the shoulder, you cross them behind the child’s back (about shoulder blade level) and then they clip in to attaching points in the middle of the panel (lower portion of child’s rib cage)
There are two additional leg straps that are comprised of an adjustable loop and a tail off the loop that attaches to the bottom of the panel in front.
The child must step through the loop to use these.

The adult portion of the harness is a approximately 8"x10" panel that centers between your shoulder blades. Two straps come from the top of the panel and over your shoulders and then clip into a second set of clips at the top of the child’s panel. A second set of Straps come off the bottom sides of the adult panel, go around your torso and then attach to the middle attaching points on the child’s harness (under the child’s arms).

We originally fitted these with the adult on a kitchen chair and the child sitting in front of us between our legs. We then simply unclipped ourselves from the child and went out to the ATV and clipped back into the child harness once seated. All clip points are color coded to prevent any confusion.

In the course of a 1 hour trail ride:
20 minutes into ride, harness had ridden up on the 3 year old and an adjustment of the leg straps brought the harness back down to centered on chest. At 30 minutes the 6 year old no longer wanted to ride in front. Her harness was unclipped and reversed on her body and then the same on the adult (about a 3 minute change in the dark by flashlight) and the ride was completed with 3 year old in front and 6 year old on the other machine as a rear rider.

Pros:
• Works as advertised.
• Easy to put on and take off
• Clear color markings on all strap/attaching points
• Practiced rapid exit of vehicle, child stayed with adult movement easily to full standing position of adult with child suspended.
• No more apprehension of the child staying on the machine. You know they are with you with this.
• Mush easier braking and accelerating with out worrying about child’s motion.
• Allows operator to concentrate on safe operation rather than child’s position, grip, safety.

Cons:
• Optional leg straps on younger children not so optional. I strongly recommend their use to keep the harness panel in center of child’s chest. There was a tendency of the center panel to ride up if not used. This may not be the case with older larger children (e.g. we did not experience this issue with the six year old with the leg straps on but fairly loose.)
• The leg straps are a loop that the child has to step trough. It would seem make more sense to me, to have strap trail directly from lower corner, pass between legs and attach to the lower panel side. (I am used to parachute harnesses) While the current leg straps are functional it makes fitment seem more awkward than it might be. (I am going to qualify this statement, because I do not know if an alternate configuration was tried and deemed less effective in this type of restraint system. If it was a cost factor, I would pay more if this feature did not decrease functionality)
• Would like to have seen Elastic rings on straps to secure strap tails.

All in all, very effective product, both in cost and function.

Tahnk you all for the feed back. Although now I am questioning my helmet choice for the youngest. She seems to do fine with the full face, and honestly i really like the fact that its a full face, but I am know wondering about the weight. I am going to pick up a collar today before this afternoons ride and give that a try. Oldyeller says Which makes me think of something else. Both children have been placing thier hands on the innermost portion of the grip. This makes it more difficult for me to have a firm grasp of the bar and impedes my access and gives the child access to the throttle. I was searching the internet for clamp on handles (L-shape) that would allow the child to hold a set of grips in, below and back a little from where the adults hands are. I was thinking this would give them a better sense of what was going on and not impead with the operation. I was not able to find any however. I am considering making some. What are folks thoghts on this.
Would this be more dangerous with them on or a viable alternative?

 

Several years ago, when my youngest was 3+, I added a strap to the front of the seat of my King Quad. I just took a piece of 1" tie down strap and looped it around the seat near the front. With the seat attached it would not slip. I only used this for veeeeeery slow rides in the yard, but it gave him something to hold tightly to without having to lean way forward to hold onto the bars.

Jaybee

 

When selecting a helmet, make sure it's snug. I'd shy away from open face ones, there are some very lightweight full-face motocross ones on the market. Yes, on their little bodies it's going to look a bit like like an orange on a toothpick. At the low speeds you'll be encountering, and given the low body mass of a child, I wouldn't worry about the more stringent Snell ratings.

I'd be nervous attaching my son to me. In a crash, my body weight could easily crush him. When I do take him for rides, he sits in front of me, with his hands on the metal part of the handlebars- between the grips. Usually, however, he rides his own quad (he's 4). [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

You might be able to find adaptors or extensions for 7/8" handlebars at a mountain bike shop. Maybe a local welding shop could create a second crossbar for you.

You do realize there's a good chance your critters will want their own atv's, right?[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

The footbaqll neck roll really helped my daughter with the helmet turning her into a bobble head doll... it filled in the gap between her chest protector and her helmet... she still has pleanty of head movement, but it stopped the thrashing... also when she had her recent wreck, it kept her from any neck injuries.

Bryce

 

Further impressions of the Sled-Pal Harness system:

This past Sundays ride was a long one. Included wooded horse trails, plowed field perimeter, Pine glade, creek crossing with associated swamp, 300 yard hill with roots and rocks and open hay fields.
Both the 6 year old and 3 year old were riding in front of the operators.
After the first 15 minutes of riding the child harness on the three year old, who was riding with me started to ride up. I added some slack from my shoulders to the top attaching points on the child harness and took some slack in on the straps that passed under my arms and under the child’s arms. This resulted in the child still being snug to me without the child harness riding up on her as the trip progressed. I also took two 24” long 3” wide pieces of nylon webbing and sewed hook and loop onto the corresponding ends and wrapped them around my legs approx. 6” above the knees. I then added an additional piece of webbing on top of this, centered on the web loop with it folded in the middle and sewn in that configuration and the ends sewn to the leg wrap. This makes two effective hand hold points for the child to hold onto. The net result was that this now allowed me to shift my weight front to rear and side to side as riding conditions and maneuvering required with the child following all of my mid/upper body motions. In other words, I never had to worry about the child’s weight doing anything other than what I was trying to do.
On the suggestion of others posting here and other forums, I also added a flat child’s football neck roll to the lower edge of the 3 year olds helmet and this drastically reduced her head bobbing and made me feel quite a bit better.

When we got to the creek/mud crossing, my wife and I dismounted and walked the probable crossing point to check water and proximal mud depth. My wife and the 6 year old went first with me following about 25 feet behind her. As she approached the water her right rear wheel clipped the end of a fallen log and I had to adjust my path of travel about one foot to the left of where she had just crossed. That one foot made all the difference. The ATV dropped into very soft mud/water on the left and both left wheels became submerged and entrapped in the mud stopping the vehicle completely from a speed of about 8 mph. I had completely shifted my weight to the right of the vehicle, standing entirely on the right foot platform and the 3 year old was right there with me. Not knowing if it was going to roll the rest of the way over into the pool of water, I exited right with the child suspended, and walked clear of the water and mud, detached her with the four clips and returned to winch the vehicle out. It gave me great comfort that I did not have to remove my hand from the handle bars as the vehicle got stuck, to restrain the three year old and this allowed me to concentrate on the situation.

While most ATV’s state clearly that you should not have passengers (primarily because of weight and body motion required to properly control the vehicle), I also understand that there are many parents out there that ride with their children. With the alternative of not taking the children with you, I feel that the Sled-Pal offers a significantly safer alternative to the unrestrained child scenario. In all instances, operating with common sense and safely with given terrain conditions is the most important factor in preventing injury along with proper head protection. I feel that a harness system simply adds a degree of safety that allows for the family’s enjoyment of the sport with a nominal cost and a significant increase in peace of mind.