Big Jump in Side by side vehicle fatalities in 2024
Save The Quad Bike In Australia founder and Quad Bike Safety Alliance Inc secretary Craig Hartley is not surprised by the reports that the number of Side by Side vehicle (SSVs) fatalities in 2024 have more than tripled since 2023. Three years ago on ABC Landline and in the Qld Country Life newspaper, he said that SSVs were potentially more dangerous than quad bikes if the manufacturers' guidelines of wearing seatbelts and a helmet were not followed. SSV sales have risen in recent years as the name brand quad bike manufacturers - Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Polaris and Canam, ceased imports following regulation changes caused by the ACCC that were regarded by the industry as untenable.
Australia is now the only country in the world not to have the availability of new name brand quad bikes. As long as there are no effective national safety training and education programs, there will continue to be SSV and quad bike fatalities that would otherwise be prevented.
Click on the image above to read the full ABC report "New statistics from AgHealth Australia show accidents involving side-by-side vehicles (SSVs) contributed the most to reported deaths on farms nationally in 2024, despite being fitted with seatbelts and rollover protection cages. SSVs, also known as utility terrain vehicles (UTV), were involved in 14 deaths last year, up from four in 2023."
Founder Facebook Page: Save The Quad Bike In Australia
Secretary Quad Bike Safety Alliance Inc.
The introduction of ACCC’s Standard resulted in the top six quad bike manufacturers withdrawing from the Australian market by refusing to comply with the “Standard” requiring the fitment of third party “unspecified add on devices” to all new quad bikes at the point of sale on the basis that:
• Their quad bikes were not designed to fit such devices.
• No engineering specifications were ever provided.
• No Australian Standard was ever developed.
• To comply with the Standard would cause liability concerns.
• No net safety benefit had been established in studies carried out by three independent organisations and three State Coronial Inquiries.
WHY DID ACCC IGNORE EXPERT ADVICE FROM USA?
ACCC ignored the experience in the United States that had seen a decline in quad bike injuries and fatalities as a result of promoting hands-on safety training courses, and the use of helmets and other protective gear”. The USA campaigns also warned-against behaviours such as no helmet use, no quad bike usage on paved roads, riding under the influence of alcohol or drugs, children under age 16 using adult-sized ATVs, and carrying of passengers on vehicles not intended for such use?
WHY DID ACCC IGNORE THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE FEDERAL CHAMBER OF AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY?
FCAI put forward an excellent report in response to the irresponsible ACCC proposal and rightly pointed out that there was sufficient evidence to prohibit the fitment of Operator Protection Devices (OPDs)
WHY DID ACCC IGNORE OVER 30,000 SIGNATURES AND COMMENTS AGAINST THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGE?
Feedback to dealers around the country also showed enormous rural backlash to the quad bike standard/legislation.
WHY DID ACCC SELF-ASSESS instead of meeting the legislative requirement of an independent Regulatory Impact Assessment and also tabling the proposed Standard for Parliamentary scrutiny?
ACCC WERE NEVER SERIOUS ABOUT SAFETY
Now that more people are dying in SSV accidents than quad bikes, it is time to recognise that ACCC has failed rural Australia. They failed to embrace the recommendations of the 2017 National Quad Bike Safety Seminar that was convened by one of our Committee members, Colin Lawson. The seminar concluded that fatalities could be reduced by up to 85% through the wearing of helmets and training in active riding techniques. (OPDs do not allow the clean separation from a quad bike in the event of loss of control.) They failed to learn from industry experience in the USA where safety training and awareness programs were successful over a ten-year period from 2008 in reducing fatalities. While as an organisation, ACCC is supposed to ensure market competition, with quad bikes now there is no competition in the market.
A JUDICIAL ENQUIRY INTO ACCC IS JUSTIFIED.
There needs to be an investigation into the ACCC in the form of a Judicial Enquiry to establish why they ignored the manufacturers advice and why ACCC officers were accused by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industry as being blatantly dishonest. It seems that ACCC had a pre-meditated plan to push quad bike users towards buying SSVs in the belief that this was the answer to safety, as they had no interest in requiring their OPDs to be retro-fitted to existing machines in the workplace, or second hand machines being sold. They made no stipulation that newly purchased quad bikes retained the OPD. In fact, one ACCC officer defended their position by advising two dealers that the OPDs could be removed after sale.
QUAD BIKE SAFETY ALLIANCE INC and other sections of the industry have formed the view that ACCC has acted unprofessionally by failing to take note of the evidence that was provided by the industry. In addition, they relied upon local static sled tests that were discredited by overseas expert engineers as not a suitable substitution for the more expensive dynamic testing that yielded different results.
Quad Bike Safety Alliance Inc. is lobbying for the introduction of uniform safety training and education programs Australia wide for quad bikes and SSVs. A national safety summit needs to be convened to establish a formal training curriculum, so that the trainers can be trained and active riding techniques are imparted to quad bike riders. An effective strategy needs to be developed in line with learning from the programs developed in the United States that have a proven 10 year track record for reducing fatalities.
Quad Bike Safety Alliance Inc. is lobbying for changes to the wording of "The Standard" so that the fitment of an OPD should be optional, provided there are warnings that OPDs may cause a greater impact on the rider in the event of a rollover and to ensure that the manufacturer or dealer does not have any liability through the fitting of an unproven, unspecified third party attachment. Respected US company Dynamic Research International sums up the argument in the final paragraph of the summary of their detailed report (see below).
Dynamic Research International examined all of the credible research evidence and the final paragraph of their three page summary is shown above and their final sentence says it all - "OPD's are not valid safety devices and should not be fitted to ATV's". Click on the DRI logo below to read the full report.
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