KEY POINTS:
More young children are being hurt in farm quad bike accidents, despite the highly publicised death of 4-year-old Molly Vanner last year.
Accident compensation claims for children under 10 injured on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) jumped 41 per cent in the year to June to a record of 106.
Waikato University sociologist Maxine Campbell told a conference in Hamilton that the acquittal of Molly's father, Gavin Vanner, on a manslaughter charge in March appeared to have reinforced farmers' willingness to let children ride the vehicles.
"He got off because the evidence was that it was normal practice. Indeed it was. All the evidence is that children are on these bikes and around them all the time," she said.
"If it becomes not normal, anybody who gets caught is likely to be found guilty. They [farmers] are a tight community, they support each other. It's in their interests not to change their behaviour."
Dr Campbell led a research programme on the vehicles last summer for the Accident Compensation Corporation. She said 95 per cent of New Zealand's 70,000-plus ATVs were used on farms, most commonly on dairy farms.
Twelve children were killed in ATV accidents in 2001, mostly in falls from the bikes or being run over. Eighty-two per cent of those injured were boys.
Molly Vanner was allowed to drive the vehicle to round up cows on her family's Taranaki farm. The 368kg bike rolled over, shattering her skull.
Dr Campbell said the bikes were not designed to carry passengers but many farmers welded car child seats on to them. A special helmet had been designed for quad bike drivers but most farmers did not wear it and there was no law requiring it.
Guidelines published in 2002 said children under 12 should not ride the bikes and those aged 12 to 15 should ride them only under supervision. But the guidelines had no legal force.
The researchers recommended lifting the minimum riding age to 15, promoting the use of helmets, ATV safety programmes in schools, reduced ACC levies for farmers who attended safety courses, and higher childcare subsidies in rural areas so that parents could leave their children in care while they worked on the farm.
ACC agriculture safety manager Peter Jones said ACC would call for expressions of interest for school ATV safety programmes in regions with most accidents: Waikato (79 claims in 2005-06), Canterbury (39), Manawatu-Wanganui (36), Northland and Auckland (both 29), Wellington (27), Taranaki (23) and Hawkes Bay (20).
He said ATV numbers were now close to 100,000.
But Federated Farmers president Charlie Pedersen said farmers stood by the guidelines allowing supervised use of adult ATVs from the age of 12. "A well-developed 12-year-old boy will weigh as much as many adult women and he will be just as strong," he said.
