The number of emergency room treated injuries has gone literally off the scale . Deaths are increasing rapidly .

Mr . KOLTER . With young people . Dr . FINE . Primarily , right . Mr . KOLTER . Thank you very kindly . Mr . BARNARD . Mr . Erdreich . Mr . ERDREICH . Thank you , Mr . Chairman .

You know it looks like to me that we are possibly dealing with what I might call the tricycle syndrome , and that is that everyone believes that since this is a three - wheel vehicle , or most of those now , although now I hear there is a four - wheeler coming in , and since many of us learned first how to get on a bike through a tricy cle that we think , or the general public thinks that it is a very safe operating motor vehicle .

Is that the impression that either of you , or both of you get from either patients you have dealt with or generally that the misunder standing is that this is a very safe vehicle because of its three wheel design configuration ?

Dr . GREENSHER . Yes , I believe the parents , at least the ones that purchase this for the use of children in the family , feel that it is much more secure . But I can recall back , Mr . Chairman and Mr . Erdreich , that the tricycle itself 20 years ago was not a safe vehi cle . It is not the same vehicle today . The handlebars came off , they collapsed . You could slide off the back . There were numerous inju ries that have been engineered out of it in the last 25 years . And at that time it was also thought that because it had three wheels it was safer .

Mr . ERDREICH . Dr . Fine ?

Dr . FINE . Mr . Erdreich , just to briefly respond . As I indicated in my testimony by their physical appearance , by their functional configuration , they would appear to be safer . I think that is mis leading , however , and I think the statistics have clearly demon strated that by virtue of the fact that when injuries are compared in these three - wheelers to the minibikes or the trailbikes , clearly you have got twice , if not almost three times , as many injuries on the three - wheelers or on the ATV or the ATC ' s .

Now this may be due in part to the impression that purchaser and operator get that these things are inherently safe and there fore they may be more subject to abuse . That is speculative .

Mr . ERDREICH . That leads me to my next question . In your testi mony , Dr . Fine , on page 4 you were citing the CPSC estimates of injury that you just referred to and the dramatic difference be tween the ATV hospitalization numbers per 1 , 000 vehicles in use and , as you said , the minibike and trail bike .

Is there data , though , that breaks that out by ages ? In other words , what I am curious about , and some of the other members have asked this question , do we have data that indicates that how ever it falls that these injuries are predominantly - -

Dr . FINE . It is my understanding that these data are collected , that age is a variable that is acquired , and they are analyzed ac cordingly . The data that we are discussing here today address pri marily the group 19 years of age and under . All right , then all of our patients in our series , as I have indicated , were 18 years of age or up .