Bullbars

ACRS Policy Position

1.        Cars should not be fitted with bullbars as bullbars considerably increase the risk of injury to other road users and, if badly designed and fitted to a vehicle, to occupants of that vehicle.

2.        In the absence of an outright ban on bullbars, vehicles fitted with bullbars should preferably be required to comply with the following as a minimum for all bullbars regardless of date manufacture:

                         i.          Australian Design Rule 42.9.1 which has been law since 1988 and states: 'No vehicle shall be equipped with any object or fitting, not technically essential which protrudes from any part of the vehicle so that it is likely to increase the risk of bodily injury to any person.' ACRS strongly calls for enforcement of this rule and the issuance of unroadworthy notices to vehicles that do not comply with this rule.

                        ii.          NCAP pedestrian impact test procedures which are based on the EEVC procedures.[i] This test protocol requires three sub-system tests to simulate a vehicle travelling at 40 km/h impacting into the head, upper leg and knee/lower. Head and leg injury values are noted and compared to an injury performance criterion.

                      iii.          NCAP offset frontal impact that simulates colliding with another vehicle. In this test, 40% of the car, on the driver's side, initially makes contact with a crushable aluminium barrier at 64km/h. 

This means that for a new bullbar to be approved for fitment to a particular make of vehicle the vehicle with the bullbar should comply or be tested according the above procedure.

3.        Finally, as a compromise between the above dot points 1 and 2 and no crashworthiness specification at all, the following should be enforced by law as an absolute minimum requirement for all bullbars regardless of date manufacture:

                         i.          Enforced compliance with Australian Design Rule 42.9.1. 

                        ii.          AS 4876.1-2002 Motor Vehicle Frontal Protection Systems Part 1: Road User Protection. In particular, any vehicle fitted with a bullbar must comply with the head form impact tests and the required ADR 69/00 Full Frontal Impact Occupant Protection and ADR 73/00 Offset Frontal Impact Protection.

As an absolute minimum owners of vehicles with bullbars that do not comply with the above dot point 3. should be issue with a non-compliance roadworthiness notice and thus prevented from travelling on public roads.

Objective

• To discourage the fitting of bullbars on the front of Australian motor vehicles including cars, 4WD vehicles, vans, trucks and busses.
• To promote correct understanding of the injury risks of bullbars in vehicle side impact crashes and frontal crashes into pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

Discussion

Steel and aluminium bullbars fitted to vehicles (car, 4WD, truck or bus) are a design feature identified as significantly exacerbating the injury risk to pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle occupants alike. Their addition to the front of vehicles is seen as increasing a vehicle's frontal stiffness and aggressiveness. A common feature is the use of bullbars on four wheel drive vehicles and also typically on the front of heavy vehicles. These designs because of their high stiffness, unyielding characteristics (not energy absorbing) and small contact areas are the total antitheses of designs aimed at reducing injury risk particularly to vulnerable road users such as pedestrians.[ii]^,[iii] The outcomes in terms of severe and fatal injury risk are clear, undeniable and known.

Paine^[iv] further argues, in addition to the increased injury risk potential of fitting bullbars, that bullbars affect a vehicle's aerodynamics and adds mass to the vehicle thus increasing fuel consumption by about 6% and consequently pollution.

Considering the case of the urban environs, presently bullbars only provide a degree of protection to vehicle body damage and not occupant protection.[v] Thus in these situations, one group of road users (the bullbar owners) jeopardise the safety of other road users solely for convenience, and minimising parking type damage to their vehicles.

Bullbars also have a long tradition of usage by people travelling in rural Australia. The main argument for fitting a bullbar to a vehicle presented by vehicle owners and bullbar manufacturers is to protect the vehicle against costly damage and in particular immobilisation via radiator damage in isolated remote areas of Australia in collisions with kangaroos or other stray animals such as sheep or cattle or any other object such as a small shrub or small tree.[vi]

In regards to economics, bull bar manufacturing is very profitable and a significant industry has built up in Australia over the past two decades. Hence, any calls for their outright banning on vehicles[vii] or to introduce regulations to control their use is met by considerable political opposition from both rural and interstate drivers as well as from after-market manufacturers. In fact, in the State of Victoria the Road Safety Act of 1986 Section 95, sub-section (8)(a) states "Regulations made under this Act must not prohibit the fitting of bull-bars to motor vehicles".[viii]

Adding further to the political debate, car manufacturers have argued that fitting a bullbar to a car or 4WD equipped with airbags will somehow effect the firing of the airbags in frontal crashes and hence have indicated that fitment of such bullbar's will void their warranty. Vehicles with airbags have crash sensors that ensure airbags inflate at the right time to protect the occupants, and to ensure airbags are not activated in minor impacts. This has further affected aftermarket manufacturers of bullbar's to the extent that a design standard has been developed to address this issue.[ix] However, the compliance requirement is quite loose in that it states " When fitted with a vehicle frontal protection system (VFPS), the vehicle shall continue to comply with all applicable Australian Design Rules."

Moreover, vehicle manufacturers claim that in a high speed crash from a vehicle crashworthiness occupant protection perspective, there is some evidence that a bullbar may affect the airbag's timing, making the airbag inflate too soon or too late to protect someone. In most cases this claim is exaggerated if the fixtures attaching the bullbar to the vehicle do not alter the vehicle's crumple zone in any significant manner. In the case of low speed minor frontal crashes, it is possible that a badly designed and fitted bullbar can cause airbags to inflate during impacts that would not normally have activated the airbags because of a softer impact into a plastic bumper bar. It is claimed that in extreme cases, the airbags could cause injury to the passengers by the inflating airbag itself. This again is a somewhat spurious claim. It needs to be pointed out that injury resulting from an airbag firing could occur in any impact situation and not necessarily one involving a vehicle with a bullbar. Thus the low impact premature firing of an airbag is more related to considerable cost of repair than in regards to injury.

The overall solution, to the above briefly outlined conflicting arguments, appears to be to require crashworthiness criteria for the front of vehicles fitted with a bullbar for their system compatibility with other road users. This includes injury criteria for occupants in other cars, and for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, struck by a vehicle fitted with a bullbar. To this should be added compliance with the Australian Design Rules for offset frontal impact in order to protect the occupants in the vehicle with a fitted bullbar. This will then enable the front of vehicles to have 'bullbars' provided they are designed to meet the system compatibility requirements and in particular injury crashworthiness performance criteria.

Hence, the ACRS Policy calls for compliance of the above listed performance criteria.

It should be noted that the NCAP pedestrian impact test procedure is more demanding in terms of injury performance requirements than the Australian standard AS 4876.1-2002, and is the preferred test procedure that should be used by manufacturers and considered by legislators. AS 4876.1-2002 is in fact a compromise position of the desirable international performance benchmark.

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