MPs press for EC bull-bar ban
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by Karen Miles • The campaign to ban bullbars reaches a key stage next month when the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee pushes the European Commission to outlaw them.
The all-party committee is asking Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock for help in banning the devices which, says the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), kill up to 175 people a year in the UK and injure up to 1,750 more. Four wheel-drive vehicles are the most common users of bull-bars but MPs also want them banned from trucks, saying they serve no other purpose than as a dangerous fashion accessory.
ROSPA says bull-bars concentrate the whole momentum of a moving vehicle into a small piece of metal with potentially lethal results.
But Kinnock is expected to encourage the MPs to lobby the UK Department of Transport to stop their use, arguing that a Commission Directive for a European ban would falter because France, Spain and Italy would not support it.
The DOT supports a ban in principal but is opposed to unilateral action.
National Owner Driver Association general-secretary Mick Binns believes bull-bars can prevent damage to the front of a truck during a minor shunt and says: "I don't believe a person being hit with a bull-bar on a lorry will come off any differently than being hit by the flat front of a lorry."