DNR OFFICIALS WARN OF MIX OF SPEED AND SNOWMOBILES
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 -- 2:24 PM
Alcohol plus speed equals deadly trail mixBy Bob Hague, WRN
Despite a spike in fatalities, Wisconsin snowmobile trails have no speed limit.
Six snowmobiling deaths last weekend, and two more this week, bring the season's total to 26. That's more than at the same point last winter, a season which saw 37 deaths. Gary Eddy is the Department of Natural Resources' snowmobile education administrator. "Seventy nine percent of our fatalities have been speed related," says Eddy. He says the DNR would like to see passage of Assembly Bill 840, which would set a nighttime speed limit of 55 miles an hour on Wisconsin snowmobile trails, which currently have no speed limit.
But state Senator Neal Kedzie (R-Elkhorn) says excessive speed is merely evidence of what's really behind most fatal crashes. "The vast majority of them have been alcohol related," says Kedzie. "People that are not sober, are not going to adhere to any kind of a speed limit, no matter what it is."
Kedzie says DNR wardens have plenty of tools to enforce safety on the trails; including the ability to issue citations for drunken snowmobiling. The speed limit bill has already passed the Assembly and would likely be signed into law by Governor Jim Doyle, but Kedzie says he has no intention of advancing it out of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, which he chairs.
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