This is every parents nightmare, and it's not that rare.

"Well every year they're finding about 136-thousand injuries and of those injuries 40-thousand plus have been in children under sixteen. So we've got to kind of stop these injuries some how," says Barbara Marumoto, (R) East Honolulu Representative.

That "how" is a new proposed bill - requiring minors to wear a helmet while on an ATV. Right now, Hawaii has no such requirement.

"From our standpoint as a trauma surgeon and as a mother it's well no pun intended, a no brainer, I mean these ATV's are motorized vehicles they have every potential to inflict a deadly or extremely incapacitating head injury on a kid," says Susan Steinemann, Queen's Medical Center E.R. Surgeon.

ATV manufacturers do put warnings on the bikes telling parents of the potential risks.

"We actually follow those rules, if we have someone come in and says they want to buy a quad for a five year old we wont sell it to them," says Mark Schneider, Cycle City.

That doesn't always mean young children don't ride them. Nationwide more than 18-hundred children have died on ATV's in the last decade. Eleven states have banned minors from riding them...Hawaii has not gone that far.

"So I thought I'd put a bill in to require helmet use for minors when they use ATV's," says Marumoto.

"I would say that in general it's not the safest thing for your young child to do anyway but if your child has an ATV or bike than absolutely they should be wearing a helmet," says Steinemann.

If the bill is passed into law, anyone under eighteen would have to wear a helmet on an ATV. Hawaii already has a law requiring anyone under sixteen to wear one while riding a bicycle.

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