"We provided him with life-saving treatment": 17-year-old seriously injured in ATV accident in the north

A serious traffic accident occurred last night in the town of Yarka in the north. At 21:12, a report was received at the MADA 101 dispatch center in the Asher district regarding a head-on collision between an ATV and a truck. MADA medics and paramedics who were called to the scene provided initial life-saving medical treatment to the ATV rider, a teenager about 17 years old, and evacuated him in an intensive care ambulance to the trauma unit at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya in serious condition, suffering from polytrauma.

Suleiman Hano, a medic from the MADA motorcycle unit who treated the scene, recalled:

"The ATV rider was conscious and suffering from polytrauma. We provided him with life-saving medical treatment and evacuated him in a MADA intensive care ambulance to the hospital's trauma unit, with his condition defined as serious."

The serious incident in Yarka joins a worrying chain of involvement of teenagers and minors in serious accidents and life-threatening traffic violations on the country's roads. As recalled, just recently it was reported that a 14-year-old boy took his parents' car without permission and sped at excessive speed on Highway 6, until he was caught by traffic police officers using real-time technological tracking.

These cases come against the backdrop of particularly worrying data from the "Or Yarok" organization and the Central Bureau of Statistics, which indicate that young people are a particularly high-risk population on the roads. In 2025, a decade-long negative record was recorded, when 32 young people were killed in traffic accidents on urban roads – a jump of 33% compared to the previous year. Today, one in five people killed in traffic accidents in Israel is a young person, a figure that re-emphasizes the critical importance of enforcement, education, and road safety.