CHILDREN should be banned from riding adult-sized quad bikes and licences and helmets should be made mandatory, a Queensland coroner recommends.
The state's deputy Coroner, John Lock, handed down the findings on Monday to complete an inquest into nine deaths between March 2012 and January 2014 from quad bike accidents.
Victims ranged in age from nine to 86, including two 11-year-olds.
The coroner also proposed creating and mandating a national training program, prohibiting carrying extra riders on bikes not specifically designed for passengers and improving safety standards.
Approximately 200 people died from quad bike accidents in Australia and New Zealand in the past decade. Of the 140 deaths in Australia, 24 were children as young as four years old according to the national coronial database.
Almost half of those (46 per cent) were passengers.
Mr Lock said his finding that children should be prohibited from riding adult-sized quad bikes and those aged under six banned from any type of quad bike was the inquest's least contentious finding.
But issues relating to quad bike design and safety protection were likely to be more controversial.
Mr Lock said there had been "robust disagreement" between manufacturers and safety advocates over the effectiveness of measures to reduce the risk of rollovers.
"To say there has been an impasse to moving forward on these issues is an understatement," he said.
Despite just 0.1 per cent of quad bikes sold in Australia being designed for more than one person, an ACCC study found about a quarter of owners rode with a passenger.
Mr Lock suggested legislation prohibiting passengers unless specified and a public awareness campaign to combat this scenario.
"A significant proportion of rollovers are occurring in situations where passengers should not have been carried," he said.
"Carriage of passengers on sit-astride quad bikes can adversely affect the handling characteristics of the quad bike and increase the chances of rollover."
A national safety rating program to eventually be implemented by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) was also recommended.
The Royal Australian College of Surgeons called on the Queensland government to act quickly on the recommendations, saying quad bike injuries were on the rise across the country.
RACS trauma committee head Richard Lewandowski said injuries had jumped from 26 in 2010 to 51 in 2012.
"Of the 111 major injuries that occurred from 2010-2012, more than a quarter of the riders were less than 25 years of age," Dr Lewandowski said.
"In the space of a fortnight in June last year, six people were flown to hospital in southern Queensland following quad bike crashes.
"For each quad bike fatality, there are an additional 40 hospital admissions and 40 emergency department presentations."
