– OPDs cause as many serious injuries as they prevent –
Melbourne and Canberra based economics and public policy consultancy Pegasus Economics has found the Quad Bike Workplace Safety Survey Report by the UNSW TARS Research Centre to be “seriously wanting”.
It found that there were “serious limitations” in relation to the statistical techniques employed by the TARS Group researchers which “renders their study and findings as largely meaningless”.
The TARS report was utilised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to recommend to the Federal government the fitting of operator protection devices (OPDs) to quad bikes to help prevent deaths and serious injuries.
Pegasus Economics said that the Dynamic Research Inc. (DRI) review of the TARS report and its (DRI) own research and report was “thorough and transparent in terms of its analysis and provides a logical and coherent line of reasoning in arriving at its conclusions”. It found that the DRI report was “a highly credible study”. Pegasus Economics said that the disclaimers provided by the TARS Research Centre are “nowhere near adequate enough to reflect the overall poor quality of statistical analysis that it undertook”.
DRI has highlighted that the initial ACCC recommendation to the Federal government for the fitting of OPDs to quad bikes was putting riders at risk of death or serious injury. The then Assistant Treasurer, Stuart Robert, called
