After thinking he had managed to convince European legislators to differentiate between working All Terrain Vehicles and those used for recreational purposes, Scottish MEP George Lyon has had to return to the fray.
His first battle centred on the bureaucrats wanting to bring all ATVs up to an on-road specification, which would have led to a significant increase in costs, as well as severely limiting their effectiveness for farmers.
Although that campaign made good progress in persuading the European Commission to accept that farm-use ATVs should be built to a separate specification from on-road ATVs, Lyon claimed legislators have introduced a new threat by proposing to reduce their top speed to 40kmph – about 25mph.
He has written to the UK transport minister, Mike Penning MP, asking him to back the campaign against cutting the top speed from the current 60kmph (about 37mph).
Lyon said that as a farmer with more than 35 years personal experience of using ATVs on a daily basis for stock work, he knew that limiting the top speed of farm quad bikes to 40kmph would dramatically reduce their effectiveness for farmers.
He said: “Many farmers have to cover significant distances in order to carry out the daily work on their farm. Checking on stock, fetching and carrying sheep and delivering feed must be done in a quick and effective manner and the 40kmph speed restriction would hamper this.
“When rounding up and driving cattle and sheep back to the farm steading, stockman have to be able to overtake and catch any animal that breaks from the herd and round them back up.
“We have to get the balance right between effectiveness and safety and I believe 60kmph gets that balance spot on.”
He said this latest move by Brussels was another example of officials failing to understand the key role ATVs played on farms.
