Living in hell right now.....

[Rreemo]

I haven't been online this week because I was in a bad ATV accident last Saturday. Destroyed my left arm and broke a couple ribs....had to have surgery on Wednesday to basically rebuild my arm/wrist....today is the first day I've felt well enough to be out of bed...crazy amount of pain. I've got me a Steve Austin arm now that's full of hardware. Good thing is that the surgeon is telling me I should regain most of the use of the arm....just going to be long recovery. I'm mostly pissed bc this is putting my projects all on hold and of course killing all my summer plans.

I'll post some X-ray pics from my phone.


Needless to say....I'll be out of the ATV business once recovered.

[Damnittsteve]

at least you didnt wreck one of those fine automobiles of yours...

[STRONGNUFF]

Damn that sucks, but it could have been worse. Hope you make a speedy recovery

[Tx Redneck]

That sucks man. We'll be prayin for ya fo sho.

[Tyrone Biggums]

Holy shit, man. That's terrible. What caused the accident?

[sspstang]

Dang man. Glad you are ok.

[Cooter]

sucks man, I hate being injured and it sounds like you've got a while on this one...

It definitely could have been worse!

Here's to a speedy recovery

[Sleeper]

That blows. Another reason why I try and stay off that shit.

[01vnms4v]

Glad you are ok, and yes ATVs can be very dangerous.

[JFurst]

What happened exactly?

[Jyard]

At least you're ok man. That's really what matters the most.

[SEB]

Good to hear your ok man.

[War Machine]

You have to respect a man whos first day out of bed gets on dfwmustangs!

[Rreemo]

Rollover at about 35-40 mph...more like a tumble.

Polaris Sportsman has what I now believe to be a design flaw....they call it electronic downhill ascent control...with the auto trans, it is a system that provides automatic rear wheel braking when you are descending a steep grade...a good concept when in 4-Low SLOWLY coming down a steep grade, but very dangerous when it suddenly engages in 4-high on a flat open surface, which is exactly what happened to me. Imagine running along at ~40mph on a gravel road or slick wet grass (in my case)...let off the throttle and it's suddenly as if the rear brakes lock up without warning, which slung the ass end out sideways quicker than I could react, and sending the machine tumbling.


Apparently this system when first added to these machines was simply automatic when in 4WD, hi or low....and there is no way to turn it off. I've been reading online and it appears a lot of other people have complained/been hurt as a result of this crap engaging In high gear.....Polaris has refused to recognize it as a problem, calling it a design "feature"....yet starting in the 09' model year they redesigned it so that it only engages in 4-low...no longer in 4-high. Mine is an 07'....the second year the system was installed, from what I can find.

It freaked me out....at first I thought the crash was caused by a mechanical failure that suddenly locked up the rear diff, bc I never hit the brakes, but when I let go of the throttle the rear tires just locked up into a skid...but my friends that went back for the machine found out that the rear end was fine....it actually still drives under its own power.....we were baffled at what caused it until we started researching it on the web.....quickly became apparent that this is the most likely cause. I recall feeling it do this one other time when I was up in Colorado....but that time I wasn't going nearly as fast, and wasn't on a slick surface....only lasted a second or two....but this time it happened at a higher speed and on wet grass, and it all happened so fast I didn't have time to react....was thrown hard and eventually made it to my feet and realized I had what looked like two wrists on my left arm...bleeding a little where a bone was barely poking thru.

[JFurst]

Be like Leah and Sue Polaris for the design flaw.

Oh and this is why I will never ride ATVs