The ASI provides some criteria to examine each visual capability. For example, the ASI determined peripheral or side vision as the ability to see to the sides while looking straight ahead. The ASI provided a method to determine a youth’s side vision by looking straight ahead while moving objects to the side. The youth should see objects at 90° to the side while looking straight ahead. In addition, based on NCCRAHS guidelines,51 children should have “good peripheral vision when wearing a helmet.”In addition to the youth’s physical development, consideration should be given to their mental development. Emotional development or mental maturity includes cognitive, perceptual, focus, discipline, reasoning, and decision making abilities. A summary of youth’s skills and behaviors related to ATV riding are presented in Tables 6 and 7. The CPSC determined nine ATV-riding skills and evaluated the capabilities of youth of different ages to perform these skills. The results are presented in Table 7. The NCCRAHS provided several recommendations to evaluate the youth’s cognitive capabilities before riding ATVs.67 The ASI youth “readiness checklist” includes sections to help parents assess their children’s motor development, social/emotional development, and reasoning and decision-making ability. Based on the checklist, youth should be able to judge the speed of objects, state the distances of objects in terms of standard units, follow the movement of objects, 4×4 grow table visualize distances as displayed by a picture or photograph, follow a moving object while accomplishing hand manipulation, and maintain relative spans of attention when given a variety of stimuli.
The National 4-H Council reported that some teenagers, particularly males, experience rapid growth around the age of 13. While they may be physically capable of operating ATVs, they still lack the emotional maturity, judgment, and experience required to operate ATVs safely based on the guidelines related to their mental capabilities.This section reviews and discusses the available ATV riding and safety training programs in the U.S. In addition to general safety training, specific programs for occupational safety and youth are presented. In the U.S., the ASI offers a free online ATV “Rider Course” to ATV purchasers. The course is also available for others for a fee. This training is mandatory in several states before riders can ride on public roads or trails. The ATV Rider Course is available for riders six years or older. Youth riders under the age of 16 years must ride an age-appropriate ATV , while trainees 16 years and older may ride an adult-size ATV. Parents or guardians must attend the course for riders 6–12 years old. The ATV Rider Course takes about 4–6 hours and provides safety education and hands-on riding experience. Based on the ASI’s reports, only about 10% of ATV buyers take the ATV Rider Course. In addition to the ATV riding course, ATV riders are encouraged to read the vehicle’s manual for proper operation of their machine since ATV models vary in design specifications, such as throttle speed regulators, braking, clutch, and gearshift control. In the U.S., youth as young as 14 have been permitted to ride ATVs while employed on non-family-owned operations if they receive training through an accredited farm machinery safety program.
For example, the National Safe Tractor and Machinery Operation Program provides training and certification programs for youths. The NSTMOP’s materials integrate tractor and ATV education, training, and certification. However, these programs lack adequate coverage of specific ATV-related topics such as active riding. In addition to the ATV riding course, a number of resources are available to learn about ATV operation and riding techniques, including Tips and Practice Guide for the ATV Rider, ATV Safety: 4-H Project Leaders Guide,78 UtilityTerrain Vehicle Operator Training Course: Instructor’s Guide, ATV Safety on the Farm , and the ATV Safety Youth Rider Endorsement Program. Details of two studies that focus on youth training programs including the participants, location, measures and interventions, and key findings are presented in Table 8. In summary, the results indicated that most youth did not get enough training for riding ATVs, and that training can significantly improve youth safety knowledge. While there is a plethora of guidelines, recommendations, safety training, regulations, and laws, the number of ATV-related incidents among youth is still concerning.18 Most of the available resources are consensus-based and lack the support of quantitative and systematic scientific evidence. On the other hand, regulations regarding ATV use by youth are subject to variances in state law and can be dismissed if the ATV is operated on private property. The lack of consistency in regulations and guidelines likely confuses the population and may make them recalcitrant towards an attitude of safety.
Several reasons explain the high number of ATVrelated injuries and fatalities among youth in the agricultural sector. Youth are not inclined to wear helmets or other safety gear, and a low percentage participate in ATV training courses. Further, a high rate of youth do not have access to ATV training courses, ride without adult supervision, travel with high speeds, use alcohol and/or drugs, ride on paved roads, ride at night. Moreover, nearlyall ATV-related injuries and deaths for youth occur on adult-sized ATVs. This is likely because youth under 16 years-of-age do not have the physical abilities, cognitive maturity, and adequate judgment to safely operate those vehicles. The CPSC, the industry, and many consumer advocates recommend selling only youth-model ATVs for children, despite the viewpoint of some medical associations and international organizations that warn that all ATVs are unsafe for children. ATVs have been categorized for various age groups based on ATV engine size and and maximum riding speed. Several sources state that adolescent children might be very tall or heavy for the youth model ATVs currently on the market and approved by the CPSC. If a child is very tall or overweight, their knees may interfere with the handlebars , which would likely affect their ability to manage the ATV. Also, very tall and/or overweight youth may significantly affect the center of mass on an ATV, thus affecting its stability and making it more prone to roll over. Riding utility ATVs, which are adult-sized vehicles, is not recommended for youth by several sources. However, some recommendations state youth can ride utility ATVs on farms after special training. An overview of several recommendations on the age limit for riding ATVs is presented in Table 9.Youth’s strength and ATV control activation force: The available sources regarding the required forces to activate ATV controls and youth strength were reviewed. There is not enough quantitative information regarding the required actuation forces to activate the ATVs’ controls besides the BSI standard, which provides limited information on activation forces. There is a need to measure the activation forces of the available ATVs and compare them with the corresponding strength of youth of varying ages and strength percentiles. The ATV actuation forces can be used as criteria for future ATV designs and modifying the currently available designs. In an ongoing project, the ATV activation forces are measured and compared to youth’s corresponding strength. Youth’s anthropometric characteristic and ATV control reachability: Several documents reviewed in this manuscript recommend youth-fit criteria . Although the available recommendations cover different fitting aspects , cannabis drying system those recommendations should be validated with actual riders and ATVs, not only in a virtual environment. Araujo et al. are evaluating the match between the anthropometric dimensions of youth and the dimensions of ATVs based on the recommendations presented in Table 4. Field of vision: The ASI provided several criteria and practical methods to evaluate one’s visual capabilities. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no available work has evaluated youth’s field of vision while operating ATVs. There is a need for a study to quantify youth’s field of vision while riding ATVs and compare it with the visual capabilities of an adult counterpart. Furthermore, the influence of external factors such as helmet design on the rider’s field of vision should also be evaluated. Mental capabilities: Several studies that assessed youth’s mental capabilities for riding ATVs were presented in the manuscript. Although several guidelines provided criteria for evaluating youth’s cognitive capabilities, the guidelines do not offer practical methods to examine each criterion. Moreover, the available guidelines are not comprehensive to assess different aspects of mental capabilities for riding ATVs .
No study evaluated youth’s cognitive maturity while riding ATVs. Therefore, additional studies are needed to determine the necessary mental capabilities required for youth to ride ATVs and then to develop tools that can assess youth for these cognitive skills prior to operating ATVs.This dissertation is inspired by the small farms and farmers that I have had the pleasure of engaging with during my research over the past five years. The food system is widely recognized as being at a critical point, and in need of transformation to address environmental and social justice critiques. The farms and farmers of Lopez Island, Berkeley, Oakland, Alaska, and Vermont I have encountered through my research are on the front lines of working towards environmentally sustainable and socially just food production. They are growing food, educating consumers in their communities, and opening up their farms as spaces of civic engagement. Their work is the manifestation of theoretical frameworks and recommendations from academic literature and forms the foundation upon which to build a better food system for more people. And yet, there remains much complexity and uncertainty around how best to implement climate beneficial and socially just food systems, starting from a production standpoint, requiring farmer researcher partnerships to investigate and scale emerging best practices. Volunteering and working on farms have been a crucial observational research method across all of my projects and chapters. Being a participant-observer on diversified, small scale vegetable farms of all sizes and geographies, from Vermont to the San Juan Islands, Oakland to Alaska, has provided me with the evidence I need to understand and interpret scientific articles on climate-friendly food systems. These experiences allow me to connect larger datasets and trends to observable, tangible realities and processes, providing a necessary visual element to illustrate the pages of numbers and text. I could not have completed this dissertation without the love grown from the soil, without hands-on contact with the life forms and biodiversity that give us food, without the conversations with countless passionate urban and rural small scale farmers, doing what they do for the planet and the people rather than profit alone.Food system challenges associated with the chemical, industrial production paradigm are increasingly intersecting with the challenges associated with global climate change. The need for change in the dominant food system is widely recognized, prompting scholars to pose questions such as “Can we feed the world without destroying it?” and describe competing visions in “the battle for the future of food” . Despite the often negative “crisis” framing of intersectional food and climate realities, there is an opportunity for proactive framing and empowering outcomes through the alternative paradigm of agroecological food systems. Positive framing, engagement and empowerment are key tenets of effective educational practices for a range of desired outcomes, including environmental, food, and climate literacy. This dissertation draws from both food systems scholarship and climate change education research to investigate synergistic food-climate interactions, focusing on small scale farms and gardens as centers for generating solutions and educating about innovations in food production that are simultaneously adaptive to and mitigating of climate change. Figure 1 shows a diagram of the food system based on commonly-represented elements , but with two modifications: 1) production at the center influencing activities in other spheres, and 2) education and policy/economic structures drawn in the surrounding “box” as important overarching considerations necessary for transitioning to an agroecological food system. This figure guides and frames the research to follow. Centering production, it reflects the data collection process behind this Ph.D. that started with working in the production space on Lopez Island, Washington. The two-directional arrow diagram offers a simplified educational model for teaching about the current impacts of food systems on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as exploring, through experiential learning, practices that reverse traditional impacts and, for example, re-store carbon in the soil. The arrows in Figure 2 are illustrative, and the “impacts” could be positive or negative. For example, currently the food system is adversely impacting the climate system through mechanized production powered by fossil fuels, fertilizer manufacture, soil tillage that releases soil carbon, dietary preferences, and other practices .