Motocross Isn’t “America’s Deadliest Youth Sport.” What’s Deadly Is Our Failure to Understand Risk Honestly.

A MotoMom Media Op-Ed & Response to USA TODAY by Courtney Specht

"Did you see the national news article about motocross killing kids?" the text from my brother read.

I saw it. About 25 people sent it to me today. I had actively decided I wouldn't read it. "We're cooked. Not because parents won't let kids ride, but this is ammo for lawyers, angry home owners..." our conversation continued. I decided I'd sit and take a read. I told my husband about it. It was an immediate point of contention - not directed to each other - but at the problem.

And frankly, motocross has a big one.

When USA TODAY published an investigation this week calling motocross “the deadliest sport for American kids,” it ricocheted across every parent group, track chat, and MotoMom inbox in the country. It’s the kind of headline crafted to shock — and it does — but headlines like that don’t just describe reality. They shape it. They set the narrative before a single statistic is examined.

When you begin to flatten a complicated sport, culture, and community into a single sentence meant to startle, you’re not informing the public. You’re fueling a panic.

I say that as someone who comes from this world, not a tourist peering in from the outside.I was born into moto. I was writing and photographing races in before I was old enough to drive when my mom — longtime editor of MotoPlayground Magazine — put a pen in my hand. My dad raced pro outdoors in the ‘70s and ‘80s. My brother owned a Supercross team and has been a licensed pro for over 20 years. My husband races A class. My own children grew up at tracks across the country, one reaching an international championship level.

Motocross isn’t a headline to me. It’s a lineage.

And that’s exactly why I take issue not with reporting on safety — that’s essential — but with the way this investigation frames motocross as singularly deadly, uniquely irresponsible, or somehow morally distinct from every other high-risk youth sport in America.

We can have a conversation about safety. We need to have a conversation about oversight. But we cannot have that conversation on a foundation of incomplete data, selective framing, and fear-driven storytelling.

Let’s talk about what the article got right — and what it oversimplified into a narrative that’s as misleading as it is sensational.

The Investigation’s Tragic Stories Matter — But They Are Not a Statistical Framework.

USA TODAY identified 158 youth deaths involving dirt bikes or motocross tracks since 2000. Every one of those deaths is devastating. Every one deserves to be taken seriously. At least three of those were friends of mine.

But here’s the issue- the article does not distinguish between:

• Backyard pit bikes

• Recreational riding

• Riding on unregulated public tracks

• Organized sanctioned motocross events

• Kids riding inappropriate displacement

• Tracks mixing unsafe classes

• Children living at unregulated training facilities

All of these scenarios have wildly different risk profiles.

Lumping them together is not analysis. It’s aggregation.

And aggregation without a denominator — no rider population data, no exposure hours, no event counts — cannot yield a conclusion about “deadliest sport” status. It can only yield raw numbers, which are then handed a dramatic title.

This is not how injury epidemiology works. It is how bait headlines work.

We would never call football “the safest youth sport” because only a handful of children die each year — not when the CDC reports nearly 300,000 sport-related concussions annually and JAMA Pediatrics finds 1 in 9 high school football players suffers a concussion each season.

We understand the distinction between frequency of catastrophic injury and frequency of death.

That nuance disappears in the motocross story.

If We’re Comparing Sports, Let’s Compare Them Honestly.

Here’s what youth sports actually look like in America:

Football

• More concussions than any other youth sport.

• Repetitive subconcussive impacts linked to long-term cognitive decline.

• Multiple heat stroke deaths annually.

  
  

We do not declare football a “deadly sport.” We respond by demanding rule changes, athletic trainers, hydration protocols, and equipment reform.

Soccer

• One of the highest ACL tear rates in youth athletics.

• Girls’ soccer has concussion rates comparable to boys’ football.

• Heading contributes significantly to brain injury risk.

Yet we don’t panic. We implement guidelines.

Cheerleading

• Accounts for 65% of catastrophic injuries among female athletes.

  
  

Yet the national conversation focuses on safety standards, not abolishing the sport.

Bicycles & ATVs

• Tens of thousands of youth ER visits annually.

• ATV fatalities outpace dirt-bike deaths by a massive margin.

But we don’t call bicycling “America’s deadliest kid hobby.”

So why motocross?

Because crashes are visible. Because they’re loud. Because they look dramatic. Because watching a child crash is emotionally arresting in ways a head-bump concussion never will be, even when severe.

However, visibility ≠ deadliness. Emotion ≠ epidemiology.

Sensationalism ≠ safety.

Motocross Isn’t the Problem. Unregulated Motocross Is.

This is the piece USA TODAY got partly right — but failed to land in the right place.

The United States has no universal safety standards for motocross tracks. That is unheard of in a sport involving speed, machinery, minors, and high-risk movement patterns.

Some tracks enforce:

• Class separation

• Bike-size restrictions

• Proper flagging

• Professional medical staff

• Age-appropriate developmental progression

Others allow:

• 250s and 65s on track together

• Jumps with trees, trucks, or buildings directly in the landing zone

• Zero medical personnel onsite

• No concussion protocol

• No protective gear requirements beyond helmets

• No background checks or oversight for trainers

• Kids living unsupervised at training camps under adults with no regulation

THAT is what kills kids. Not “motocross.” Not the sport my family built their lives around.

The problem is the absence of structure.

USABMX maintains standardized track design, emergency medical oversight, verified reporting, and child protection policies - and a required sanctioned and insurance. AMA-sanctioned motocross has frameworks — but unregulated tracks fall through the cracks.

Where deaths occur matters. Most are not happening at well-run sanctioned events. They happen where oversight is missing.

If the investigation pushes the industry toward mandatory licensing and safety requirements? Good. We should have had it years ago.

But blaming the sport instead of the system is how you get fear, not reform.

About the Culture: Moto Parents Aren’t What the Headlines Suggest.

I’ve been at races where parents act like unhinged recruiting agents for a fantasy factory rider deal that will never come. I’ve had a team owner threaten to fight me in a pit because a kid got hurt under their watch and their ego couldn’t handle accountability.

I’ve seen grown adults with raging Napoleon syndrome put their own pride ahead of a child’s safety.

Those people exist.

But most moto parents? They are not careless. They are not delusional. They are not talent-pipeline addicts.

They are overwhelmed.

No one universally teaches parents:

• Proper bike displacement for developmental stages

• What safe track design actually looks like

• How to identify dangerous coaching environments

• What concussion symptoms require ER-level attention

• How to evaluate training facilities

• How to advocate for their kid on race day

• How to understand risk vs readiness

We shame parents for not knowing the safety rules of a sport no one bothered to standardize.

The moral panic is misdirected. We need to educate, not condemn.

Risk Is Not the Enemy. Ignorance Is.

The USA TODAY framing implies that kids should not participate in physically risky sports — at least not this one.

But risk is how children grow.

Motocross builds:

• Skill mastery

• Focus

• Emotional resilience

• Physical competence

• Independence

• Community

• Accountability

• Self-governance

Those are not small things. Those are the very traits our culture complains that kids lack.

Risk is not inherently harmful. Uninformed risk is.

And uninformed risk thrives where systems fail.

If We Want Fewer Kids Hurt or Killed, Here’s What We Actually Need:

1. National licensing and safety standards for motocross tracks

Design, maintenance, class separation, protective run-off zones, medical requirements.

2. Mandatory on-track medical personnel

This is standard in nearly every other youth high-risk sport.

3. Concussion protocols

Like football, soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and cheer already have.

4. Parent education standards

A one-hour course would prevent an astonishing number of injuries.

5. Transparency from AMA

Collect and publish injury data like the governing bodies of nearly every other youth sport in America does.

6. Oversight of training facilities

Especially those housing minors.

7. Enforcement penalties for unsafe operations

Close the loopholes that allow anyone with a bulldozer to open a track.

Kids don’t need motocross taken away from them. They need motocross to grow up.

**Motocross isn’t the deadliest youth sport.

Unregulated motocross is. There is a difference — and it matters.**

If USA TODAY’s investigation pushes this conversation into the light? Good. Let’s talk about it.

But don’t mistake sensational headlines for solutions. And don’t let a sport that builds courage, community, and capability become the scapegoat for an oversight system that has been broken for years.

We don’t need to fear motocross. We need to fix it.

And as a lifelong moto track rat, a MotoMom, and a journalist who’s been telling these stories for nearly three decades, I promise: I’ll be one of the loudest voices helping do exactly that.

See you Sunday,

-MotoMom Court