When you think of an all-terrain vehicle, what image forms in your mind? If you’re younger you might picture a quad or a four-wheeler as your default ATV, but folks who knew the market before 1988 may know something different: This odd three-wheeler with no suspension, sold by Honda, and banned from the U.S. for the sheer number of children hurt and killed by riding it.
The Honda ATC90, a 90-cc three-wheeler with soft tires robbed off an amphibious car in lieu of suspension or even a rear differential, hit U.S. dealers in 1970. It was always intended for our market, even originally called the US90, to give American dealers something to sell in the colder months — even if those dealers didn’t quite know what to make of it at first. Motorcyclist explains:
Honda knew it would likely be a hard sell, so it organized a weeklong dealer event at California’s Pismo Beach featuring more than 100 pre-production units for dealers to ride and experience. They had a grand old time on the ocean dunes, but the big question remained: How would dealers gauge the US90’s sales potential?
“Most had a hard time seeing the market,” says a Honda associate who helped run the event, “unless, of course, they lived near sand dunes or a gravel pit.” Even some inside Honda wondered. “As a motorcycle rider since the early 1950s,” says longtime Honda president Tom Elliott, “I thought the US90 was a little weird and wondered if there was a market for it.”
Yet, despite the trepidation, dealers bought in. So did consumers. By 1973 Honda saw enough of a market to introduce a smaller youth-oriented model called the ATC70, and over the years the ATC grew to meet demand — the ATC110 in 1979, the 185 in 1980, the performance-focused ATC250R in 1981 and the utility-minded ATC200E Big Red in 1982. People wanted ATCs.
Racing classes formed, national championships full of riders holding their ATCs in near constant slides. Expert riders weighted the unusual shape with more body English than MotoGP’s finest, holding their torsos fully off in front of one rear wheel or the other to stop the trike from tipping. Riders were getting truly into ATCs, taking them further and further past whatever limits Honda had imagined in development.
Then, on March 14, 1988, the United States Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a consent decree. It named Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Polaris, all ATV manufacturers, and demanded an immediate stop sale of three-wheeled ATVs. OEMs were to instead spend their money on rider training nationwide, a public awareness campaign, and — most intriguingly — “Agreed upon age recommendations for operating ATVs to prevent young children, who are at greatest risk, from riding the wrong sized ATVs.”
See, while the adults were having their fun sliding ATCs around in the dirt, kids were getting onboard too. Honda knew this, it created the ATC70 just for them, but kids with performance dreams in their hearts were getting on the bigger trikes anyway. Then, according to studies published just months after the ATC ban, those kids were getting hurt and dying. Emphasis mine:
All-terrain vehicle (ATV) accidents cause 7000 injuries and 20 deaths per month. In this prospective multicenter study comparing three- and four-wheelers, data were obtained on all ATV accident victims treated at 33 participating institutions in 13 Western Michigan counties from July-November, 1986 (N = 143) and on 51 accidents from the preceding 18 months. Of these 194 accidents, 29 per cent involved four-wheelers. In this 78 per cent male population (mean age 21), 23 per cent required hospitalization. One half of these victims sustained a fracture or dislocation and 14 per cent needed surgery. Thirteen per cent had serious neurologic injury. Average hospital bills were $294 for outpatients and $7669 for inpatients. Two thirds of the patients had some disability. Three fatalities were recorded. Analysis of the data showed the following: (1) the three-wheeled ATV design is significantly more unstable than that of the four-wheeler (P less than .001); (2) though more stable, the four-wheeled ATV was still associated with frequent accidents as severe as those involving three-wheelers; (3) riders under age 16 were more likely to be using their ATV improperly (P greater than .05) and had more severe injuries with a higher hospitalization rate, and (4) these ATV riders had inadequate training and protective gear.
Kids, under-trained and under-armored for the task, were hopping aboard three-wheeled ATVs and seriously injuring themselves. Both adults and children were hurt, but kids were less likely to know what they were doing atop an ATC — making it all the worse that they were less prepared for crashes. It’s no wonder that they were more often hospitalized, had more severe injuries, and that the levers of government quickly moved for their protection. Kids have to be kept safe.
Except, all told, the ATC ban didn’t do as much as it could’ve. By 1989, studies showed that kids were getting nearly as injured on four-wheelers, but those remained legal for kids to ride. Even as late as the 2000s, I grew up riding my little 50cc and eventual 125cc ATVs with just my HJC helmet and the knowledge that I was supposed to lean into a corner — lest I end up like my 250cc-owning friends, two brothers who managed to both roll their shiny new-to-them ATV in their gravel driveway on the day they purchased it.
Honda’s ATC was banned for what it did to kids, but four-wheelers did similar damage to kids whose parents were mildly less safety-minded than my own. The ban helped, sure, but it didn’t target the core issue — kids without proper gear, without proper training, on trikes too big for them to effectively ride. That’s a thorny issue to regulate away, though, and cutting trikes from the market is more feasible for government to do.
The Honda ATC died because of a ten-year ban instituted in 1988 after children without armor or training were hurt and killed riding the trikes. In the following years, four-wheelers took over the market, and companies have since followed that unbanned trend — never returning to the three-wheeled idea. Maybe it’s tainted now, maybe too many people know the story. Or, maybe, wheels are just better in even numbers.
