Quad bike users urged to be cautious and consider terrain

There have been three deaths as a result of two quad bike accidents in the last week. Photo / Getty Images

By RNZ

A leader in farm safety is urging people to be cautious when using quad bikes.

Three deaths have occurred in quad bike accidents in the North Island over the past week.

Police have named the victim of a quad bike incident at Marokopa in Waikato on Wednesday as Louise Quinn, 39, from Hamilton. The investigation into the incident was ongoing, they said.

Two bodies were recovered on Saturday following a quad bike accident on Friday in the Far North at Peria, east of Kaitāia.

Six people were on the quad bike which crashed into a swimming hole in the swollen Waikāinga Stream. Four people were able to make it out of the water and were taken to hospital with minor to moderate injuries, but two others were not found at the time of the accident.

Colin Glass is a director of Safer Farms, an organisation working to reduce preventable injuries and deaths in rural Aotearoa.

He said quad bike incidents were one of the most frequent causes of preventable death on New Zealand farms.

“Please think, are you using these machines in the way that they were intended, they’re very very powerful and for that reason alone it’s quite easy to get yourself in a challenging position. So please take care at all times, they can be dangerous in inexperienced hands.”

Most quad bikes should not have more than one person on them at a time, Glass said.

Meanwhile, farmer Andrew Fleming, who became paraplegic after his own quad bike accident more than 20 years ago, urged anyone using them to be very cautious and to think about what terrain they were taking four-wheel farm vehicles to.

“You need to be very careful, you know make sure you are competent in the place that you’re taking it. You know just think about where you do take it because just going down a slightly steeper hill, or going down a slightly steeper hill if it’s raining it could make it slippery and get you into trouble.”

- RNZ