The New South Wales Department of Industry and Investment has released a formal Health and Safety Alert of quad bikes. As it is not yet available online, it is included below.
Footnote: Quad bike safety will be given a rest for a little while unless there is a significant issue. KJ
On 12 June 2010, SafetyAtWorkBlog noted the spokesperson for the National Farmers Federation, Duncan Fraser, supporting the voluntary fitting of roll protection devices to quadbikes in specific circumstances. On 20 June 2011, the New South Wales Farmers Federation’s Industrial Relations Committee Chair Graham Morphett has spoken in favour of “the mandatory fitting of roll bars” to quad bikes.
This is an extraordinary blow to the quad bike manufacturers who are set against rollover protection structures (ROPS) or crush protection devices (CPDs) for quad bikes.
Morphett’s comments deserve a little more analysis.
“Quad bikes can be extremely unstable on uneven farm terrain. Manufacturers have a responsibility to improve the design of the vehicles to ensure their safety. No quad bike should be sold without a roll over bar,” he said
SafetyAtWorkBlog has criticised manufacturers for not developing new designs that counter, what some research has described as the propensity to rollover. Morphett echoes this position.
Perhaps more significantly Morphett believes that new quadbikes Continue reading “Farming federation calls for mandatory fitting of safety devices to quadbikes”
Not only are quadbike manufacturers resisting the inevitable, they have gone on the attack with posters being distributed that criticise the installation of crush protection devices (CPD)s, safety devices increasingly being recommended by safety advocates, farm safety specialists and government departments in Australia.
According The Weekly Times on 16 June 2011, Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Polaris and Kawasaki and others are promoting a safety message through the poster (pictured right). This position was hinted at in Dr Yossi Berger’s comments on a previous blog posting.
The major rural newspaper reports a curious position that may indicate that criticism of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) may be misplaced.
“FCAI motorcycle manager Rhys Griffiths said it was the manufacturers’ decision to put the posters up, and “we had no part in printing it”.
The FCAI was “yet to go public with our message other than to have the industry position paper available”.” [links added]
There is no mention of this poster campaign on any of the manufacturers’ website mentioned above.
The FCAI may claim not to gone “public” on this poster campaign but the industry position paper is, at first glance, damning of the roll bar options available. However a close reading of the industry paper on rollover protection structures shows a large number of equivocations and conditional statements. There also seem to be blanket conclusions from some comparisons of dissimilar ROPS.
The debate continues and seems to be evolving into the public relations arena. This is very unfortunate as the evidence, the issue of the safety of riders of quadbikes in the workplace, can become clouded by spin. Up to this point the arguments have been about the research evidence. The poster is an unhelpful distraction.
On 20 May 2010, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation televised a story on the South Australian 7.30 program about the supposedly poor investigative performance of SafeWorkSA. The article was framed by a mother’s grief, the grief of Andrea Madeley over the loss of her son, Daniel.
The story was some weeks coming as the story’s production began around the time the ABC were filming at the Workers’ Memorial service in Adelaide a month ago. The story promised to be a hard-hitting criticism of the State’s OHS regulator but the latest Industrial Relations Minister, Patrick Conlon, handled himself well and what could have provided a provocative national context to the story, the harmonisation of OHS laws, dampened the impact.
Both Yossi Berger and I have written about the findings of Coroner Mark Johns on this blog. Yossi agrees that OHS regulators are almost all too slow to implement control measures to prevent recurrences of injuries and death, I thought the Coroner was poorly informed.
The lasting image of the 7.30 storywas the young boy talking at Adelaide’s memorial about his loss of a relative – the way he kept talking while he sobbed and cried.
All OHS regulators must improve their game in empowering employers and workers to prevent injury and death. Coronial criticisms are unlikely to affect changes in safety management by themselves. Crying boys are also unlikely to affect lasting change, but it is almost a certainty that the harmonisation of OHS laws will change very little.
In early 2010, Australia’s Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) established a trans-Tasman working party to look at the safety issues of quad bikes, often called all-terrain vehicles. The working group is in the final stages of its report and a major motorcycle industry representative has not liked the findings and has apparently withdrawn from the working group. A report on the increasing tensions was published in this week’s The Weekly Times. SafetyAtWorkBlog has been told that the quad bike industry representative has walked out in protest.
Let’s look at what HWSA said about the working group in May 2010:
“HWSA Chair, John Watson, said every farming fatality leads to immeasurable suffering in close-knit rural communities and these figures are not acceptable.“The working group is expected to deliver solutions to safety problems associated with use of quad bikes on farm properties and raise awareness of practical risk controls,…“The group will look at issues that include design, safety equipment, training and instruction, aftermarket accessories, safe use and point of sale,….“The joint program of work will be delivered through an Industry Solutions Program where industry and regulators work together to address high risk safety issues – an initiative that has successfully provided practical solutions to a number of issues across many industries.“The working group is focused on producing tangible and sustainable safety outcomes across the farming and agricultural industry where quad bikes are commonly used….”
“It is our objective that all quad bike users are well informed of the manufacturer’s recommendations in relation to the safe use of these vehicles…”
The sticking point in the working group was, according to The Weekly Times, that
“”…the committee was expected to back the recommendation to “consider fitting an anti-crush device”, the strongest position yet for roll-over protection.”
It is common for companies to invest in expensive office furniture in the belief that the furniture will encourage the worker to undertake tasks more safely. In most circumstances, this is a waste of money and a major distraction from managing safety throughout workplaces.
The safety message is also being confused by some OHS regulators. It is well-established that injured backs and other musculoskeletal injuries improve with movement rather than the traditional bed-rest. However this encouragement to move is not reflected in most of the advice for configuring workstations. Continue reading “Ergonomics advice does not always reflect the reality”
A week on from Australia’s The Weekly Times using its front page to open a debate about roll over protection structures (ROPS), the debate has continued in the letters and op-ed pages of The Weekly Times.
Dr Yossi Berger of the Australian Workers Union asks the valid question in his opinion piece – should all the responsibility for quad bike incidents be placed on riders or can manufacturers do better? If injuries and deaths on quad bikes continue to occur after rider-focused control measures have been advocated and encouraged for many years, isn’t it time to look at more than PPE and administrative controls? As Albert Einstein is alleged to have said:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Rhys Griffiths of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries says in his piece that the quad bike manufacturers are frustrated that low-cost, in safety-speak, administrative controls are not being applied by riders or endorsed by safety regulators. The control measures recommended are likely to have positive safety impacts but these could be improved further by the integration of a ROPS. However Griffiths says that :
“Roll Over Protection Systems are not the answer”.
I agree but safety is rarely about “the” answer. Better outcomes are mostly achieved by a combination of controls that can accommodate the varying work characteristics. Continue reading “People enter the quad bike ROPS debate”
