Sled freaks: Brake it or be a story

Ask any Maine warden to talk about the dangers of speeding snowmobiles and he’ll probably shake his head and shrug, as if wondering which of his many stories he should start with.

Sgt. Pat Devlin’s most recent experience came this past weekend when he helped investigate a snowmobile accident in Plymouth. A Dixmont man, thrown from his snowmobile when he hit a drift while riding across a pond, was run over by two other snowmobiles in his party. The riders admitted that they couldn’t see their fallen friend, who suffered head and back injuries, because of Saturday’s blizzard-like conditions.

“When I asked them how fast they were going, they said not very fast at all,” Devlin recalled. “Only about 60 miles an hour – in a white-out, mind you. But that kind of response is not unusual. It’s the mindset of a lot of people these days, with sleds capable of going 100 miles an hour or better.”

Maine’s winter recreation season is just beginning and already four snowmobilers are dead. The most recent fatality occurred over the weekend in St. Agatha, when a Massachusetts man failed to negotiate a curve on a trail and struck a tree. As usual in most snowmobile deaths, speed was a factor.

“We’re seeing the same problem year after year,” said Lt. Tim Liscomb. “In the last decade or so, speed has become the biggest problem – bigger than alcohol.”

In 1996, 12 people were killed in snowmobiling accidents in Maine, the highest death toll at that time on record. Yet that tragic number has since become a standard statistic. A dozen people were killed in each of the last two seasons – the 438 accidents in 2001 was the most ever – and this year’s fatality rate has all the makings of a yet another gruesome season ahead.

“It certainly gives us cause for concern for the rest of the winter when so much has happened so quickly,” said Liscomb.

Liscomb has done four public-service TV spots so far this season urging snowmobilers and ATV enthusiasts to ride with caution on trails and across always-hazardous lakes and ponds. But the cautions don’t seem to work. In Liscomb’s jurisdiction alone, an area covering only one-fifth of the state, five snowmobiles and ATVs have already broken through the ice.

Maine has approximately 100,000 registered snowmobiles, 12,000 miles of trails, and no speed limit to govern machines that can travel in excess of 120 miles and hour. The only law, in fact, is that snowmobilers maintain a “reasonable and prudent speed according to existing conditions.” But as most wardens will tell you, what is imprudent to them may not be considered imprudent to a rider going 80 who swears he was in full control of his rocketing machine the whole time.

“Speed limits have been talked about before,” Liscomb said, “but I don’t see that they would change anything or could even be enforced – you can’t have wardens sitting on trails with radar guns. Besides, you don’t have to go 60 to have an accident. Even at 30 you can be going too fast around a dangerous curve and hit a tree and die.”

The only effective way to reduce the accident rate, he said, is for the speed freaks to use some common sense and put the brakes on their beloved sport.

“Telling people to slow down and drive safely doesn’t seem to have much impact,” he said. “It’s the riders themselves who have to start taking responsibility for their own safety.”