Sad comment - PLEASE ride an ATV with a roll cage or roof....
Lost a cousin rolling over his ATV when he tried to climb a hill, ATV rolled over and crushed his skull...
He'd gotten his DMV 6 months prior.... Long, sad family story.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer... Have fun, but please ride an ATV with some sort of roll over protection, it's personal for me.
sorry for the loss Serk. ATV's do not have roll cages on top, only UTV/side by sides do. Is pretty scary though for sure 2 years ago 1st time ever in past 20 years driving them had my first 'near' complete flip over on my 800lb. large 2-up ATV. Never thought it could happen to me but did, accidentally stabbing the thumb throttle slipping my palm of my hand on it going down a hill with 4 ft embankments straight up on each side, trying to navigate a boulder 2 ft tall in middle of an ATV route in a county park northern WI, and did NOT have it in LOW gear like I should and that ATV jumped right over the boulder hitting the embankment straight up and over ATV went on it's side luckily NOT all the way over ontop of me since my leg got nearly pinned under the side of the ATV. It all happened in like 1 second no time to react or do much. Low gear 'might' have prevented excessive speed in that 5 ft area going up that hill side, maybe? 800cc near 70hp ATV goes mighty quick off the line if had my way knowing what I know now, I would've preferred a 650cc ATV less jumpy off the line. Had a 500cc identical ATV for my kid and actually preferred that better less torquey/jumpy off the line, smaller 25 vs. 26 inch tires for easier turning/maneuvering, and still plenty fast enough top end for my needs 64 mph vs. 73 mph for 800cc machine. I cannot imagine a 1000cc ATV feel really no need to have one would be even jumpier off the line than 800cc.
I over-thought the entire situation worrying about the darn rock and how to get around.over it since unable to get completely around it. Needless to say, no severe injuries got lucky a few more inches and ATV would have come over right on top of me, not good. Just glad wife was not on told her to get off ATV while I overthink that darn boulder. Told park ranger to fill in around that boulder with 3-5 inch crushed rocks he had laying in a huge pile not being used having a front loader right there easy 2-3 dumps and done. After we attempted 20x's to upright the heavy machine and getting ride back to our truck/trailer 10-15 miles or so away, we had to find a gas station to buy car type oil to fill crankcase since near 2 qts. leaked out the air intake was not good luckily it started right up. Drove it right up that darn hill OVER the rock no problems. Like said, I overthought the entire situation and would have been better to hit that huge boulder head on and scrape up the underneath of the ATV bottoming out for a split second.
I see youtube videos all the time of thrill ride people enjoying rock crawling going uphills that no one should but they are a different bread wrecking their machines and rolling over lucky to be alive in my eyes. Fixing up costing 1000's on whether a 5K ATV like mine or 20-30K big UTV is not my kind of enjoyment. I enjoy a few mediocre technical trails, but having a huge 4-5 ft wide 2-3 feet tall boulder in the middle of an ATV route unable to get around it, which in my opinion is the park mgrs. fault to not fill in around it, is not my idea of fun. ATVs are dangerous no doubt about it, but 99% of the time common sense prevails, but accidents do happen regardless.
I have seen on ATV trails idiots ruining it for others going up embankments on farmer's field lines near fence rows while others mudding off the trail and really irks me since locally a nice farmer owned off the regular ATV route got closed down about 10 years ago because of a few idiots ruining it for all.
