Our guide to machinery and plant duties covers the general obligation quad bikes currently sit under. This page is about what Safe Work Australia has proposed to put on top of it, and about the costing behind the proposal, which is the part of a consultation almost nobody reads.
The problem, in the regulator’s own numbers
The discussion paper is blunt about the record.
Since 2011, 245 workers have died in quad bike incidents, and between 2020 and 2026
there were 107 fatalities nationwide
, and
Many deaths result from asphyxiation caused by rollovers, runovers, crushes or being
thrown from the vehicle
.
The number that ought to stop a reader is the recent one. In 2024 Safe Work Australia
recorded 20 quad bike deaths, which the paper describes as
the highest number since the ACCC Quad Bike Safety Standard (ACCC Standard) was fully
implemented in 2021
. The consumer-product standard that was fought over for years, and
which requires OPDs on new machines sold, has been fully in force since 2021, and the worst
year for workplace deaths came after it.
That is not an argument that the standard failed. New machines are a small share of a farm fleet that turns over slowly, and a standard on what can be sold does nothing about what is already in the shed. But it is the fact that makes the current proposal a workplace-law question rather than a product-safety one.
What is on the table
Six options, four of them regulatory: requiring OPDs on all workplace quad bikes, mandating helmets, restricting passengers on operator-only (type 1) machines, and restricting workplace use to operators aged 16 and over. The two non-regulatory options are better data collection and targeted safety communication.
None of this exists in the model rules today. As the paper puts it,
While there are no quad‑bike‑specific regulations in the model WHS
Regulations
, a PCBU manages quad bike risk through the general plant duties, principally
regulations 214 and 215 on powered mobile plant, which already require managing the risk of
the plant overturning and of the operator being ejected.
The costing, which is the story
EY assessed each regulatory option on a standalone basis over a ten-year period, in 2026 dollars. The results are not close.
| Option | Benefits | Costs | NPV | BCR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mandate helmets | 37.29 | 9.13 | +28.17 | 4.09 |
| Minimum operator age 16 | 6.92 | 1.65 | +5.27 | 4.20 |
| Restrict passengers (type 1) | 2.82 | 1.01 | +1.82 | 2.80 |
| Require OPDs on all | 37.47 | 58.89 | −21.42 | 0.64 |
Source: EY, Reforms to Improve the Safety of Quad Bikes, March 2026, Table 8. BCR is the benefit-cost ratio; a figure below 1 means modelled costs exceed modelled benefits over the period.
Read the OPD row carefully, because the headline is easy to get wrong.
Its modelled safety benefits are $37.47 million, the largest of any single option and
marginally ahead of helmets. The problem is the other column. Costs are $58.89 million,
six times the helmet option, and EY is explicit about why: The need to retrofit a large
existing workplace fleet could result in a lower benefit–cost ratio over the modelling
period
. New quad bikes already come with OPDs fitted. The cost is the machines already
on farms.
Helmets win on the opposite arithmetic. EY attributes the result to
low implementation costs combined with reductions in work‑related fatal and serious
injury outcomes across a broad rider population
. A helmet is cheap, it applies to every
rider immediately, and it addresses a mechanism the discussion paper names directly.
Three things that stop this being a verdict
First, EY says the options should not really be read one at a time. Its conclusion is
that an integrated package of reforms could deliver net safety benefits, even where
individual measures perform less strongly when assessed on a standalone basis
. A
standalone BCR below 1 is not a finding that the measure is not worth doing alongside
others.
Second, the injury data probably understates the benefits of everything in the table.
EY records that on owner-operated farms and small agricultural businesses
injuries may be treated privately, managed without hospital presentation, or not recorded
as work-related
. Under-counted injuries mean under-counted benefits, and that pushes
every ratio in the same direction.
Third, EY calls its own work provisional:
The analysis of the proposed safety reforms in this report is preliminary in nature
,
and it lists validating compliance behaviour, fleet data and injury circumstances as areas
needing more work. What it does claim is stability: sensitivity testing on fleet size,
vehicle working life and equipment costs changes the scale of the numbers but
they do not materially alter the direction of results or the relative performance of
options
.
Two states did not wait
The thing a national costing exercise can obscure is that most of this is already law
somewhere. The paper records that
In 2022, Tasmania introduced Regulation 216A in their Work Health and Safety Regulations
2022 and in 2024 Queensland introduced regulation 226A in their Work Health and Safety
Regulation 2011
, and that
These regulations mandate that operators receive appropriate training, limit the number
of passengers, restrict passenger and operator age, and mandate the use of helmets
.
So three of the four options being costed nationally are in force in two jurisdictions, and the one that is not in either of them is the OPD mandate, which is also the one the costing ranks last. Whether that is two states having read the same arithmetic early or a coincidence of what is easy to legislate, the practical position for a national operator is that the rules already differ by state.
What this means for a duty-holder today
Nothing in the model rules has changed and nothing is imminent: Safe Work Australia Members agreed to consult in December 2024, the paper appeared in April 2026, and the consultation closed on 1 June 2026 with no announced date for advice. Any change to the model WHS Regulations would then have to be implemented separately by each jurisdiction.
The duty that applies now is the one that always applied. Regulation 214 already requires managing the risk of powered mobile plant overturning and of the operator being ejected, and a rollover on a quad bike is precisely that risk. If you run quad bikes and cannot say what you have done about rollover and ejection, the absence of a quad-bike-specific regulation is not the protection it might look like. And on the evidence in the table, the cheapest thing on the list is also the one the costing rates most highly, which is worth knowing well before anybody makes it compulsory.