How safe are Quad bikes


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 13/09/2011

Reporter: Tracy Bowden

The Quad bike is the mechanical workhorse of the Australian farmer, but they are notoriously unstable. There are calls for protective devices to be fitted to them but manufacturers say that's an unnecessary measure.


LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The quad bike has become the workhorse of the Australian farmer: about 300,000 are used across the country. But there are growing concerns about their safety. So far this year, quad bikes have killed 15 people and seriously injured dozens more. Workplace Health & Safety organisations want crush protection devices fitted to quad bikes, but the vehicle manufacturers believes safety awareness should be the focus. As Tracy Bowden reports, it's pretty confusing for the public.

TRACY BOWDEN, REPORTER: John Horton reckons he's lucky to be alive. The Victorian farmer sees his quad bike as an essential tool of the trade, but it nearly killed him.

JOHN HORTON, FARMER: As soon as it started to go, I felt the back go underneath me and the front come out, handle bars coming down and I thought, "I'm gone here. This is it. I'm dead."

TRACY BOWDEN: He was rushed to hospital suffering horrific injuries.

JOHN HORTON: I was in there for a month. Two weeks in intensive care, eight days in a coma, suffered 16 broken ribs, fractured scapula in three places, and a ruptured spleen and two cardiac arrests.

TRACY BOWDEN: John Horton could so easily have become a statistic.

TV NEWS PROGRAM: ...killed when the quad bike he was riding rolled on top of him.

TV NEWS PROGRAM II: Police say a 24-year-old was riding this quad bike along the beach with friends when it hit a wet patch of sand and rolled.

TRACY BOWDEN: 15 people have been killed in accidents on quad bikes - or, as they're also called, all-terrain vehicles - so far this year. That's more than the annual average for the past decade. The fatalities have ignited a debate about how to prevent - or at least reduce - quad bike accidents.

JOHN LAMBERT, MECHANICAL ENGINEER: The industry has blood on their hands. It's just unbelievable that an industry that's supposed to be responsible, supposed to be interested in the welfare of the people that buy their devices, won't do something about it.

PERRY MORISON, SUZUKI AUSTRALIA: If operators are trained, use appropriate levels of protective equipment - especially a helmet - then they are a very safe piece of equipment.

TONY LOWER, AUST. CENTRE FOR AGRICULTURAL HEALTH AND SAFETY: There are instances where people do misuse the bikes, potentially, and there are deaths that result. However, by far and away the majority of people actually use the bikes quite responsibly.

TRACY BOWDEN: Tony Lower, from Sydney University's Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety, has been analysing data on quad bike deaths. He says almost half are the result of rollovers.

TONY LOWER: The person becomes entrapped under the vehicle, and therefore suffers from that asphyxiation where they can't breathe, and/or a crush injury.

JOHN LAMBERT: And that's as far as I can go.

TRACY BOWDEN: Engineer John Lambert has more than 40 years' experience in agricultural safety. He is convinced that if rollover or crush protection systems were fitted, there would be a dramatic reduction in deaths and injuries.

JOHN LAMBERT: It is, in concept, no different to the frame that's fitted on most small tractors or tractors without cabins. If it rolls, it only rolls onto its side. You're unlikely to be trapped underneath, and if you are trapped you are much more likely to move the quad bike in some way and get out from underneath.

TRACY BOWDEN: Five years ago, Queensland inventor David Robertson developed the Quadbar - the only commercially available crush protection device for quad bikes made in Australia.

DAVE ROBERTSON, MANUFACTURER, QUADBAR: You just can't continue allowing people to die like this. It is the most horrendous death, being crushed underneath a quad bike. It can take up to five hours to be crushed to death, and it's excruciatingly painful.

TRACY BOWDEN: A trans-Tasman quad bike safety group has supported calls for the devices to be fitted to all quad bikes. Organisations including the New South Wales Farmers Association, Victoria Police and New South Wales National Parks also want change.

PERRY MORISON: They misunderstand the research. They misunderstand the safety claims that are being made in particular, and in our view shows safety claims need to be addressed and challenged.

"YOU AND YOUR ATV" SAFETY VIDEO: As a general rule, if the hill is too steep to walk up, it's too steep for your ATV.

TRACY BOWDEN: The group representing motorcycle manufacturers - the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries - has launched a campaign warning against the devices. The punch line: "We won't have a bar of it... and neither should you."

PERRY MORISON: The industry's view is that they certainly can't be made safer by the addition of a rollover protection system.

TRACY BOWDEN: Perry Morison, from Suzuki Motorcycles Australia, says research does not support the safety benefit of rollover protection systems, or "ROPS".

PERRY MORISON: The injury risk is often equal to or greater than the injury benefit. So, in layman's terms, what it shows is that if a quad bike or an ATV is involved in an accident - specifically and particular a rollover - that having a large metal obstacle bolted to the machine can often cause quite severe damage to the rider.

TRACY BOWDEN: The industry points to studies by John Zellner, at Dynamic Research Inc. in California, but his findings have been challenged by independent engineers in Australia.

JOHN LAMBERT: Interestingly enough, when they evaluated the Australian-designed Quadbar, his actual research shows that there is a reduction in injuries and deaths. But then he has this totally unbelievable way of evaluating the benefits of a safety device - which nobody else in the world uses - to show that it's still not good enough.

TRACY BOWDEN: The WorkSafe groups have actually said that the industry has got blood on its hands because it hasn't installed a device that could improve safety.

PERRY MORISON: Well, it is a view that we disagree with.

TRACY BOWDEN: There is a strong criticism, though?

PERRY MORISON: I think it is an unfair criticism, quite frankly.

TRACY BOWDEN: So when the companies say that they have made the vehicles as safe as they believe they can, is that correct and is that good enough?

RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA, SAFETY EXPERT UNSW: Well, no, it's not correct because they're still killing people. We've still got deaths and serious injuries, so they haven't gone far enough.

TRACY BOWDEN: Raphael Grzebieta, from the New South Wales Injury Risk Management Research Centre, believes the unfortunate result of all this debate is a confused public.

TRACY BOWDEN: Why do you think there are those two so opposing views?

RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA: I think it has a lot to do with litigation. I think if the industry admits it doesn't have a suitable design for a rollover, and if they provide any design, then they wind up opening the floodgates in terms of civil action for product liability.

TRACY BOWDEN: If you decided to fit them, would it be feasible that people who'd had accidents in the past could then attempt to take legal action?

PERRY MORISON: Don't see any circumstance in which we would decide to fit such a device.

TRACY BOWDEN: 18 months after his accident, John Horton is back on his quad bike, but with a rollover protection device fitted.

JOHN HORTON: I think safety first. They should have some sort of roll protection, because I really feel that would have saved a lot of my injuries.

RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA: I would like to see funds invested in identifying the mechanisms by which people are being killed and injured - and then appropriate designs, researchers working together with the industry, trying to address the problem and trying to find a solution..