Video: Cam McCaul, Carson Storch, Dusty Wygle & More Get Together for a Snowy Jump Session

 Only if you don't know how to ride them. I still have an ATC70 in the shed, ride it now and again for sh*ts and giggles. I would love to get my hands on one of the new 450 conversions. There are a coue of companies modifying CR450Fs, would be a BLAST in the dunes !!!

 Yup!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C8z0rFnjk

 @ATV25: That was the problem, though. Too many people found out too late that they didn't know how to ride them. 3-wheeler and Ford Bronco accidents kept American trial lawyers in boats and second homes throughout the '80s.

 @rodeostu: You can't argue with that but at some point in time people need to take responsibility for their actions. If I cried foul everytime I got hurt those lawyers could have bought an island LOL

 @ATV25: That said, manufacturers also need to take responsibility for what they sell to the public, particularly when the manufacturer has the engineering know-how to foresee how things could go wrong with their products. The Honda ATC's were clearly marketed as allegedly being so easy to ride that kids could ride them, which clearly wasn't the case. They were ass-heavy (and thus likely to loop out on hills), and had a low tipping angle. The engineering consequences of the design were well understood.

As a company with decades of experience building and racing cars and motorcycles, Honda had no shortage of engineers who, if management had cared to ask, could explain the multiple possibilities for minor operator error snowballing into catastrophic injury.

 @rodeostu: So the next time you go OTBs is it the bicycle manufacturers fault or you pushing to hard. They know the same thing Honda did about the dangers of selling their products. I see ads with kids riding bikes all the time. :-O

 @ATV25: Apples to oranges comparison, my friend. If a kid falls off a decently designed bicycle, that's on them. But that doesn't give bicycle manufacturers a mulligan on using their best judgment and engineering expertise to keep from unleashing badly designed products on the marketplace.

The Honda ATC's design flaws were something that the manufacturer understood, but made no effort to advise their customers of. If you're selling a product that requires expertise to operate correctly, and you not only fail to advise your customers of the need for expertise, but instead, send the opposite message - that your product is something a kid can operate, then, yeah, you deserve to be picked apart by trial lawyers.

Further, bicycle manufacturers can certainly be held liable for releasing dumbly-designed products. Salsa got into all kinds of s#@! over the "cro-moto" stems - which only had a single bolt for clamping the stem to the steerer tube. Sure, if you were hyper diligent and always checked that one bolt, you'd be fine, but at the same time, Salsa could just as easily designed a stem with two clamp bolts, so that if one worked loose or was improperly tightened, your handlebars won't detach.

Responsibility is a two-way street, and in "Small Gov't 'Murica," where the government isn't likely to step in and regulate, lawsuits do a good job of reminding manufacturers not to make stupid engineering and design decisions.

 If you don't know how to ride one then don't get one.

 @chrisdeck: After about the thousandth ATC rollover death, Honda stopped selling them. Now nobody can get one.

 @rodeostu: Yes you can, there is a company modifying CRF450s into trikes. I would love to own one for the dunes !

 @rodeostu: 3 wheelers were around in the 70’s but mostly farm use. It wasn’t until almost 20 yrs later they were banned after becoming popular with kids/adults for recreational use. Rider error.

 @emptybe-er: No. If rider error were the culprit, then ATC users should have gotten injured/killed at the same rate as dirt bike and ATV riders. That didn't happen. The injury/death rate for ATC's was way out of line compared to other offroad recreational vehicles.

The fact that ATC's were sold in the 70s for farm use is irrelevant to the question of whether they were safe for recreational trail use. Manufacturers switched up their marketing of the ATC's for uses that they were not safely suited for. Puttering around on the flat surface of a farm is one thing, attempting to ride trails at speed is something quite different.

As a hypothetical, suppose John Deere starts marketing its tractors as commuter vehicles, and someone buys one and flips it trying to take an onramp at the posted speed limit. The fault for that accident's on John Deere, for selling something that was not fit for its advertised use.

Same deal with ATC's, they were never engineered to be driven at speed on uneven terrain.

 Good idea, you're a rockstar.

 Because Cam is a super upbeat mellow dude, and you feel as if he'd be happy to hang out with you if you turned up at his yard. =)

 In central Oregon, those junipers truly are over-abundant and actively managed (thinned out from open spaces).

So one may ask: why are they over-abundant?

Well, all of the competing trees were logged out ages ago. Junipers aren't good for much, so they were left in place, which allowed them to take over and create patches of monoculture. They have incredibly deep roots that deplete groundwater. So here we are now, actively managing a native tree because it's amplifying the past impacts of human activity.

Here's a photo a took a few year back of an area with wayyyyy to many junipers
flic.kr/p/25JLCeN