State speed limit needed for snowmobiles?

High death toll prompts proposal

By Anita Weier

State legislators take pride in proposing a speed limit on snowmobiles - 55 miles per hour at night.

But some people think that's a tad too fast to be hurtling along a trail that likely will feature bumps, curves, nearby trees and even deer.

"You hang onto your handlebars going 55 miles per hour," said Carol Maas of Waunakee after reading about the proposal. "Why aren't they debating 35 miles an hour, especially at night?"

Maas, who snowmobiled a lot in the 1990s, said she knows that the equipment has improved dramatically. But she still thinks that high a speed is not logical.

"The DNR says it's a reasonable speed to not overdrive your headlights," said Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, who proposed the speed limit for a trial two-year period. "A hell of a lot of these accidents are at 90 miles per hour."

Kaufert, an avid snowmobiler, noted that a speed limit of 50 mph sharply reduced fatalities in the 2000-01 winter season, compared with the prior year, from 39 to 26.

Twenty-six people have died in Wisconsin from snowmobile accidents this winter as of Feb. 22, which put the state on a pace that could equal last winter's 37 deaths.

Gary Eddy Jr., the ATV-snowmobile administrator for the Department of Natural Resources' bureau of law enforcement, said that studies in the past determined that 50 mph was the speed at which a person could safely react to an obstacle once their headlights hit that obstacle.

"They could come to a stop or take evasive maneuvers," he said.

"The reason we say 55 is because of improvements in technology. The halogen headlights on snowmobiles now are much brighter. We are comfortable with seeing a range of 50 to 55 miles per hour."

He conceded that terrain varies and that slower speeds are safer.

Of course, even if the Legislature acted now, the season would largely be over before a limit went into effect.

But the bulk of the all-terrain vehicle season lies ahead, and there are no statewide speed limits on ATV trails, though some counties have enacted them.

"In the 2004 season, there were 17 deaths. The leading cause of death was an ATV striking a fixed object; the second was an ATV rolling over," Eddy said. But there were multiple causes, and a little over half were related to speed. "A speed limit may be something to look at," he added.

The DNR requires safety education for those who register snowmobiles and ATVs for those born after the laws went into effect. For snowmobiles, the requirement applies to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 1985, and for ATVs the requirement is for those born on or after Jan. 1, 1988.

Fees for public use registration are $30 for two years for both snowmobiles and ATVs.

About 220,000 people have registered for ATV use and 190,000 have registered as snowmobile drivers.

Maas wonders how many legislators are among them.

"If they were, they would have to say this is crazy to go that fast at night," she said. "A trail is not like a road. Even if the suspension is great and everything else about the machine is great, if you hit a bump at 55 miles per hour, I would think it would throw you right off the machine. And I'm sure a high percentage have used alcohol."

Sen. Neal Kedzie, R-Elkhorn, chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Transportation Committee, agrees with Maas that other factors need to be considered, and he has held up action on Kaufert's bill, which has already cleared the Assembly.

"I have been willing to sit down and amend and get to the root of the matter - which is alcohol-related. Whether someone is driving 55 or 25 miles per hour, it can be fatal if alcohol is involved," Kedzie said.

"Speed is not as much a factor as the ability to negotiate the terrain. Perhaps we need to make our trails safer. We have a variety of things we ought to examine."

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