Snowmobiling consistently ranks as one of the most dangerous winter sports, judged by accident and death rates. Five snowmobilers died in Maine last March within 72 hours of each other.

By the end of the sledding season, the number of deaths in Maine snowmobile accidents had reached 12 -- double the number who died the previous winter.

And this December, two teens -- one 15, one 19 -- died in snowmobiling accidents just as the sledding season started.

Maine does a reasonable job of regulating adults using snowmobiles. State law says they must ride sober, they need to obey rules about which property they can and can't use and they cannot endanger others. And while there are no speed limits on Maine snowmobile trails, sledders are held to the standard of "reasonable and prudent speed for the existing conditions."

When it comes to the Maine sledders who are between 10 and 18 years old, though, we think state law is insufficient.

Earlier this week, we editorialized that there were some things -- like common sense -- that couldn't be legislated. But in the case of children and teens using snowmobiles, we believe that there are measures the state should undertake to make sledding safer.

Currently, state law requires that all sledders under the age of 18 must wear helmets while operating or riding on a snowmobile, though that requirement is limited to when they operate on a public trail paid for by the state's Snowmobile Trail Grant Program. (Data from national studies show that almost half of accidents occur on private property.)

There's no lower age limit for operating a sled, although a child must be 10 or older to snowmobile on land other than that owned by a guardian or parent.

And a child must be at least 14 years old to operate a snowmobile across a public way.

That's simply not enough to protect children, who are at a higher risk of accidents on snowmobiles than adults. That may be because the increasingly high-powered machines are hard for small people to handle.

A study by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota of snowmobile injuries in children and teens is not easy reading unless you have a strong stomach for descriptions of temporal lobe hemorrhages, kidney lacerations, hip dislocations and compression fractures.

The study demonstrated that the majority of the children's injuries were the result of the driver losing control of the sled.

And even though, as in Maine, helmets are required in Minnesota for those younger than 18, only 53 percent of the children in the Mayo Institute study wore helmets at the time of their accident.

There's no reason to believe the compliance rate with Maine's juvenile helmet law is any better.

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society say that no one younger than 16 should be allowed to use a snowmobile. In Maine, snowmobiling is a family sport, and we doubt the state would adopt a law limiting sled use to only those 16 and older.

But given that snowmobile injuries are on the increase, that the machines are growing ever more powerful and thus difficult to control, and that the injuries are often serious and potentially fatal, we would urge state lawmakers to start talking about whether it makes sense to allow virtually unfettered snowmobile use by children under 16.

In the meantime, we believe that the state should require children to take a snowmobile education course before being allowed to use sleds, either on private or public land. New Hampshire requires children older than 12 who don't have a driver's license to take such a course. Students are taught about potential dangers, from weather to improper use of the snowmobile, what maintenance must be performed for sled safety and the rules for private property use.

"At the very least," Lt. Robert Bryant of the N.H. Department of Fish and Game told us, "it exposes the youngsters to what safe operation is and what it looks like."

And of course, as Bryant added, "Judgment in youth is probably not a strong point, and whether they end up following through is a question mark."

Nevertheless, such a course would do two things: It would increase the likelihood that kids and teens who snowmobile at least know the rules and perils of the trail, and it would slow down their access to that trail, if not their speed once they're on it.