The roads there are not freeways, throughways, boulevards or city streets. Except for the occasional "farm to market" paved road, they are high quality gravel roads with deep ditches, capeable of safely handling 50-60 mph very light traffic, usually spaced one mile apart, which give access to these large parcels of private property used for farming. There is no need to go on any of these roads to snowmobile as the best snow is found OFF the roads since the roads are plowed.
So the mystery here is why the girls were on this country road. That article does not give this information, but we can guess maybe they were going being farms. Their parents should have absolutely prohibited even crossing the road. Maybe they did.
I live in NW Iowa about 45 minutes from where this accident occured... so incredibly sad for all the families. My daughter just turned 12 -- the same age as these girls.
When I lived in Maine, the snowmobiles had trails to ride on but around here, they ride in the ditches on the sides of the roads!!! There are even little mini STOP signs and YIELD signs put up. I just hate it. What is amazing to me is how fast they go through the ditches alongside the highway and who knows what might be in that ditch?! Dead deer are pretty common, not to mention all the other things... at our own property in the country, I see snowmobilers FLYING across the front of our acreage in the ditches. I don't even want my daughter near the front when she's outside sledding on our hills. There is no way the snowmobiles could stop if she were in their way and often times you can't see their headlights until they are right there.