Bull bar removal again under threat

Hello members and other interested viewers.
There is a move afoot again to ban bull bars from Australian vehicles.
The last time this was proposed it was suggested that vehicles entering the major metropolitan areas have the bar removed......
There are signs on the Goldfields Highway in WA warning motorists about "Feral" animals on the road, a picture of a cow and a kangaroo are shown.
May I ask since when was a kangaroo classed as a "Feral Animal?"
There is a survey here that is worth reading to form your own opinion and complete if you feel strongly enough about the subject.

http://mailer.volume.net.au/display.php?M=521255&C=9c8cb12bbeed6c302a083525871bd5be&S=1637&L=2&N=763

Happy touring watch out for the cattle and kangaroos.

Hey guys
I'm guessing the reason for this is the same as last time is that it's dangerous in accidents ect
I have had someone close to me been hit bye a ute with a big bullbar
I am not against them as I think it is stupidity that kills not bull bars

Gday


One time when going north I saw a sign saying to watch out for wildlife and there was a picture of a KIWI on it , "dont remumber seein one of thus out thet way before eh!"

Wonder who the brain surgeon is that has been trying to get bullbars off cars again, I think that the amount of lives that have been saved on country roads by the humble bullbar would far exceed the amount of deaths that have occured in city areas by them, is it just me? or do other people think that some of these jokers have nothing better to do with their time than dictate their wishes on others.


cheers

stayyerAU

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Yes! We know it is madness but we the public elect these "learned" people into our parliament.

Banning the Bull bar is STUPID, I've herd of a a few stories of people dying because they landed with a Roo through there windscreen, bloody Governments( ), why don't they run the bloody country and let do what we love doing I'm not taking my bull bar of for any dumb government( ) or stupid pedestrian who decide to gross the road without looking.

regards Johnny

P.S. I did the survey

This seems to be a recurring theme that crops up with some random sort of repetitivity??
Why would someone in government go to the trouble of stirring up electors for something that does not seem to have any logic??
Maybe I'm just thinking from a sort of "country " perspective but it just seems logical that if you're driving at night in rural Australia, then you and your's need protection from animals on the road, whether they be kangaroos or sheep, goats, cattle etc.
Why does this proposal keep cropping up?? I'd just about guarantee that if someone wanted to do some serious sums about how many people had been killed in metro Australia by bars -v- how many people had been saved in rural Australia, there would be no contest.
Just another example of the tools we keep electing to govern us i'm afraid.
Jeeez I just need to go bush for a while I think Going a bit stir crazy sitting around waiting for things to cool down.
The pollies are still tools but .
cheers
Brett

Madness, Car insurance costs would skyrocket in country areas if Bullbars were banned. All government cars that travel distances in country NSW have bullbars installed for safety.
It was very upsetting when i had to take my 2 semi auto (pig/goat)rifles out of my bombproof gun safe and hand them in to the police. I will write to whoever over this one if it looks like getting legs.

tributer

Politicians trying to justify there existance, thats why we have so many petty laws. mallee00

Glad I have one fitted to my city registered 4WD, pulled into a shopping center car park the other day, whilst talking on the phone and hit a concrete filled steel bollard , didn't see the dam thing as there was pedestrians everywhere, lucky not a scratch to the vehicle, somebody should ban those bldy dangerous things, had to have a good session at the pub to calm my nerves before the drive back home

Any of these people. be they, greenies,antibullbar etc... they should be held PERSONALLY responsible if any one dies because of their banning ideals .... then see how many want to ban this - ban that because "someone" MAY die 1. because of the said item 2. because of their own stupidity ... as soon as they realise that people are people and as such their are 6 billion variables so you cant protect everyone aginst their will

Sorry for the rant

The bull bar does not kill people. People kill people. Removing a bull bar of a car or 4X4 will not stop people being killed by the vehicle if it is traveling fast enough. They should take a survey and look at how many people are killed by vehicles that were fitted with bull bars and vehicles fitted without bull bars, and were they killed by a vehicle that was fitted with a Bull Bar did that Bull Bar help kill that person or would that person been kill with or without the Bull Bar.
Pollies Bull PooP. I've got a Bull Bar on my 4X4 and if it was not for the Bull Bar the drivers side front of my car would have been stoved in when I was traveling (slow) down a very muddy road and lost traction and the car started to slide sideways and hit a tree. The only damage was to the bull bar. Not a mark on the car. Thank God for my Bull Bar !!!! You hear about small children being killed by 4X4 backing out of driveways, next thing you hear is band the 4X4's. NO, band the driver, the 4X4 did not kill the child, the driver did. Put reversing camera's on all vehicles and that should reduce that problem. I've got one on my car and it is a great help in backing out of shopping centre car parks and down my driveway.

Wombat

I did the survey!

Perhaps these doooogoodes that suggest such things should be made to drive through country areas at nignt, or early morning or dusk without a bull bar in and area thats got plenty of "wildlife" trying to compete with you for the road.

Its time to retake control of our own destiny and tell these wantabe wankers where to get off.

Gday


The very reason that bullbars were invented was to protect occupants from injury so it stands to reason that there would be further damage to the victim/animal in the event of an impact, without the bullbar a person or animal that is run over by a road car usually ends up over the bonnet, into or over the windscreen and sometimes over the top of the roof of the car, because of the more angular shape of most 4wds I would think that most people that were hit by them would end up through the windscreen in just the same way as a kangaroo or emu would on impact.

By the very design of the bullbar it is made to deflect the victim away and usually downwards so if you run over something it wont come over the bonnet and into the cabin, the problem with this of course is that a person struck in this way will usually end up underneath the vehicle sustaining drag injuries as well or also getting run over by the wheels too, so I am thinking that its because of these added injuries that they are thinking that it would be better not to have bullbars on vehicles at all.

But my arguement is that they seriously need to have a look at the statistics of this thing as a whole, and work out whether the costs both in lives and further damage to vehicles by animal impacts on the outback roads, outweighs the deaths of pedestrians in city areas, some of these pollies get ideas into their heads and run with it blindly, they dont look at the whole picture and generally in most things its the minority that seem to get more attention than the majority.

Anyone remember that goose Paul Keating?, he wanted to ban 4wds, and publicly said that he would like to tax them off the roads, damn fool he was, 4wds are not the issue, it is and will always be the drivers, anyone seen how many tiny little mummies are driving their kids to school in the family Landcruiser, barely able to see over the dashboards, in most cases these cars are driven in the cities because the owners believe that they are safer in them, the plain truth is that there would be a very high percentage of owner drivers of 4wds that dont have the experience or training to operate essentially what is a small truck, they simply are not designed for city and surburban use, they for the most part do not drive or handle like a road car, so it stands to reason that in a situation they are harder to control and dont stop as quick, and to top it off many are equipt with things like bullbars and never leave the bitumen, let alone even do any country road travelling.

A mate hit a cow at 100klm per hour one night on his way back from Meekatharra in his landcruiser pc, it was fitted with one of those smart bars (plastic looking bullbar) the vehicle sustained 4+ thousand dollars worth of damage even with the bullbar fitted, without the bullbar it would have been so much worse and he possibly wouldnt have survived, if you drive country roads and want to stay alive I think you simply have to have a bullbar fitted to your vehicle.

My 2c

stayyerAU

Great subject matter. I was under the impression that the Pedestrian Council had given us a break. Apparently not.

I spend a while uploading some gory photographs I've taken after hitting a roo and detailing my reply to the survey.

I think that by renaming "Bull Bars" to something more descriptive of their use ("Safety Bars" or "Safety Bracket" would be ideal), we can drive away the negative public perception of this entirely essential vehicle accessory.

well said StayyerAU, you hit that right on the head.
Only last year i was traveling with the family in my Nissan str 4wd when i hit 2 very large roos on a country hwy at 100kms near Molong nsw.
The bull bar took massive damage in the impact and still caused quite a bit of damage to the front of the 4wd. I can only imagine what the damage would have been like if i hadn't have a bull bar fitted, the car would have been a right off and probably would have worn the kangaroos in my lap or worse, my kids laps. I have seen what a roo does to a car without protection from a bull bar, the women driving it was lucky as the roo smashed into her windshield and buckled the roof right back. She had minor head injuries but i think she was lucky to survive.
I have driven 4wds most of my life and will probably never change and I wouldn't have any problem with the RTA having a test for large 4wd owners/drivers because the do handle different. As long as its free and not another revenue raiser.
Or maybe the can teach idiot city pedestrians to look both ways before jumping out in front of a car???? bull bar or not.

cheers
Jack0gold

Bull bars are not designed to save the life of the driver, they are designed to simply mitigate damage to the vehicle when in a collision with an animal.
The big problem are the Toorak Tractors running around town wearing huge bullbars. These are the machines that never get out of the city more than once a year - if ever. The owners of these machines should be discouraged from fitting bullbars or even buying a 4x4. I once saw a city woman driver asked why she drove a big toyota 4x4. Her reply was it gave her PRESENCE on the road. How dumb is that. Yes, driving a 4x4 in the city is safer for the passengers but deadly in the event of a collision for the occupants of a smaller vehicle such as a conventional car.

I drive a 4x4, I don't have even a nudge bar but then I don't drive in the country at night and I will never fit a bull bar as I know the damage they can do to people and occupants of smaller vehicles. But even if I did drive at night I don't think I would fit one. I'd rather damage my 4x4 than drive a person down under my 4x4 and drag them along the road churning them into a bag of broken bones.

And most of the smaller utes and sedans you see on the road at night don't have bullbars. Travel at a lesser speed on country roads at night, keep your eyes open and you are unlikely to hit anything larger than a rabbit. I drove country roads for 25 years as shearer and didn't have a bar of any sort on my cars and never had one collision despite driving thousands of klm at night in those days. I do believe I was very luck but nevertheless I didn't think I needed a bull bar or a 4x4.

One big worry is that bull bars negate the inbuilt ability of a vehicle to absorb energy by a controlled collapse of the vehicles front end. This ability does save many lives and should be taken into consideration when thinking about a bull bar.

Cheers, Jim

No doubt bloody Harold Scrubby, President of the pedestrian council pushing his barrow again

More enforcement of the pedestrian laws and pedestrian education is what might work. Banning bullbars wont lessen the number of injuries. Pedestrian responsibility will.

Can't get Bumpers for my old Patrol Now.

Granite, you raise a good point on the subject of bull-bars not allowing a vehicles crumple-zones to perform as designed.

Still, whilst you wouldn't want a person to be struck by the front end of any speeding vehicle, I would prefer to keep my vehicle's front end from damage whilst offering a lock-down mounting point for a winch. The safety of the occupants of a vehicle is MORE important to me than the experience of any creature or person foolish enough to step in front of a moving vehicle (on the assumption that the driver is on the ball and driving responsible, obviously). The odds of me hitting a person are thankfully extremely remote. The odds of me hitting a kangaroo and phenomenally high. I often time my driving on the country roads around the goldfields with the welfare of the animals in mind. I always drive 20kmph slower at dusk than the local limit (to allow more braking distance) and I will sometimes leave earlier than I want to so as to enable me to reach a sealed road before nightfall. When night driving in rural areas, I often seek out a truck to sit behind. I let them become my "snow plow" for "ignorant critters".

My only gripe with 4x4 vehicles is the sheer number of dents they put in my sedan which I use for city driving. All the dents in the side of my car are the result of sh*tty drivers parking next to me in their elevated 4x4s by opening their doors and bashing them into the side of my own vehicle. Worst example was when I attended the local Camping and Caravan show for a week. I was left with chipped and dented duco on both sides of my car from those genuinely useless jerks.

I can understand the idea of a bull bar on large transport vehicles, thes e vehicles are difficult to manover suddenly when a roo or other animal jumps out in front. With the bar fitted then the driver can happily splatter the animal off the road without damage to his truck and without running his truck into oncomming traffic.
In Canberra where I live, kangas and wombats are everywhere in the city and on the highways and I have seen 4 x 4s with bull bar nutter element in control deliberatly aim their vehicle at kangas and other animals on the side of the road with the apparent intention of killing the roo, wombat, cat or dog ( they do this in the suburbs or out on the open roads) I have seen other vehicles not necessarily 4 x 4s, fitted with huge bull bars swerve from one side of the road to the other in attemps to deliberatly kill cats ( a childs dearest pet most likely).
These nutters get some sort of satisfaction from being able to tell their mates how they clobbered a 7 foot roo and it left no mark on their dickhead bull bar fitted piece of sh..t.
these are the turds who should never be allowed to fit bull bars at least that way some animals and people would be saved.
Travelling down the Kings Highway one evening following a city idiot in a "look at me I am bigger than you" 4 x 4 that deliberatly ploughed into a bloody wombat that was not even on the road. Probably just wanted to prove that his 4 x 4 could actually go Off Road and that his vehicle was indestructable.

Oh yeah! You are right.
What is it with motorists that once they have parked their car they switch into dickhead pedestrian mode and persistantly step out in front of on comming traffic at crossings. Aside from having a death wish here is a bit of news for those people. It is illegal for a pedestrian to step onto a pedestrian crossing or any other crossing if a vehicle has altready entered the crossing and it is illegal to step onto a crossing without first having stopped to check that it is safe to cross, that is, car,drivers, cyclists etc that are approching, have noticed you and are slowing down in preparation to stop.

Geez Adrian........... Are you fair dinkum?

Either you are prone to huge exaggeration about the actions of Canberra drivers......or........you have simply verified what most of us already know about the capital...........It's full of arseholes

Come now, How many people have you really seen carry on like this with your own eyes Hmmmm?

I have always had bullbars fitted to my 4x4s and saved plenty of damage due to kangaroos. Even my government work vehicle had a roo bar and saved that vehicle a number of times.
It is the city dwellers that only take their kids to school that should be made to remove them, not those that go bush. BUT, how do you regulate that?
I really don't see that they can implement this move providing the vehicle is fitted with a complianced bar that insurance companies approve.
Besides, who keeps their original bumper anyway? Most of them are thrown out and the replacement cost would have Dealer franchises laughing (IF they could get a replacement bar)

Panther

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Next time Nero that you see a large strip of solid rubber sitting on or near the road (blown truck tyre) think about how that actually got there. I hate sitting behind trucks for that very reason, a chunk of rubber that size will come through the window more easily than a roo.
True Goldstalker. I was 3rd back from a B Double once when there was an almighty bang. The rubber flew over the two cars in front of me and landed beside me on the highway. I have stopped 2 more trucks since with the CB as they had treads delaminating.

Panther

Goldsubaru wrote:Geez Adrian........... Are you fair dinkum?

Either you are prone to huge exaggeration about the actions of Canberra drivers......or........you have simply verified what most of us already know about the capital...........It's full of arseholes

Come now, How many people have you really seen carry on like this with your own eyes Hmmmm?

No exaggeration. As far as seeing people aim their vehicles at animals, well you only have to drive around canberra any night for a couple of hours and you are bound to see something and as to seeing people drive at animals out along the Kings Highway (I travel that road a lot) well I have seen it three times which does not sound a lot but I am just one driver out of thousands who drive that road every day and the fact that I have seen this activity at all indicates that it is distressingly frequent.
Drive around canberra and you will soon be stressing out because of tailgaters, dickheads changing lanes in the middle of roundabouts, they try to straighten the intersection out and are quite happy to cut you off to do it, Bugger all of these nitwits use their turn indicators and when it rains all the hoons come out to play on the wet roads to show how easy they can loose control of their car. Mate I could go on forever, but get beyond the ACT boarder and everything is normal again. I think there is something in the air here that stuffs up everyones brain . Of course it hasn't effected me tho coz I aint smart enuf ta be a dickhead an eny way i az got imoonaty .....Coz I lernded ta drive in victoria.

Talking about a truck blowing a tyre. I was cruising in a hire car in america arizona or navarda from memory.

Meet these two yanks cruising on harleys in a town. I left and about ten minutes later they went past me on the freeway there was a truck in front of them from memory. Then one of the rear tyres blew out on the truck and went flying backwards a big chunk of tyre missed one of the guys on the harley by about 4 inches give or take.
It would of killed him had it hit him. Plus the guys only protection on his head was a red and black bandana.
This forum has just jolted a long forgotten memory from the past.

I also heard the pedestrian council Mr Scroobey I think, whinging and whineing about bullbars on 2GB radio and how they should all be banned and they where pushing for it>

Does any one remember the episode about truck tyre treads coming off on hwys on Mythbusters.
It was proven the it can take your head clean off if your in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
Dont really think a bull bar would help in that case

Cheers

Jack0gold

depends on its trajectory and angle and how far back u are as well.. But i understand where u are coming from. I have always wondered how good those wire fly type screens where on some vehicles near the windscreen. As i was driving from Port Hedland to Broome one time to visit Malcolm Douglas ( RIP) and about 12 kms out of town a truck past me ( one of those big 4 trailer jobs) and whacko i copped a spray of rocks as it passed me on the opposite side of the road and has 5 new bullet whole cracks in the windscreen.

Goldsubaru wrote:Geez Adrian........... Are you fair dinkum?

Either you are prone to huge exaggeration about the actions of Canberra drivers......or........you have simply verified what most of us already know about the capital...........It's full of arseholes

Come now, How many people have you really seen carry on like this with your own eyes Hmmmm?

Aye! AyeI!!!
I az ony jus noticed; Ya cawed me a a...hole! I awta take afence ta vat... aw mabeee I wiwe take afence ta ya insted... a bit ov 4 b 4 fence post vat iz!!.........Naaah jus kiddin

I have been in canberra close on 30 years now after leaving the RAAF, stayed because the missus had a good job which she didn't want to leave.
It does seem that this place attracts a lot of dead heads from all around Australia...... you have to be a dead head to actually want to come here when there is the rest of Australia to choose from.