Father broke own rules on quad bikes

The four-wheel farm bike was not the problem, it was the joker that let his 4-year-old daughter ride it, Gavin Vanner told police.

The Patea dairy farmer appeared in the High Court at New Plymouth yesterday charged with the manslaughter of his little girl Molly.

She died on August 30 last year when the 368kg all-terrain vehicle (ATV) he let her ride rolled on her 18kg body after she lost control of it riding across a paddock.

Crown prosecutor Cherie Clarke said Vanner was grossly negligent that day, guilty of his daughter's manslaughter - or at least guilty of criminal nuisance in failing to take reasonable care to avoid danger to her life, safety or health.

In response, Vanner's lawyer said it was an accident - Vanner was not a man who would deliberately risk his daughter's life.

In opening the Crown case to the jury of three men and nine women Ms Clarke said Vanner, 38, told police in the days after Molly's death that he had allowed her to ride the ATV.

She was a passenger on the Suzuki King Quad as they were going to round up the cows for milking when he stopped to make a phone call.

Molly called to him that she would go and round up the cows.

Ms Clarke said the jury would hear him say he "broke his own rules, his safety went out the window".

Vanner told police that as she rode off across the paddock he saw her speed up. She lost control and the bike rolled over her.

He later told police "it's not the bike's fault - it's the joker that put the kid on the bike," Ms Clarke said.

"The Crown is not saying he did it deliberately. The Crown is saying that he was grossly negligent."

Not one person in the courtroom did not feel sympathy for Vanner or his family, she said, but the jury had to judge the case on the facts.

Justice Rodney Hansen heard there was no legislation surrounding the use of ATVs on farms although Federated Farmers and other interest groups including the Department of Labour and ACC had developed guidelines for their safe use, released in May 2003.

National Federated Farmers president Charles Pedersen said the guidelines were drawn up because of mounting concern about the number of deaths and serious accidents on farms involving ATVs.

He said they were only agreed industry best practice because if the guidelines were made regulations, farmers would be in a situation where there would be "widespread non-adherence", leaving their own constituents at odds with the law.

The intention was, however, that the guidelines could eventually be used by the likes of the Department of Labour in prosecutions where death or serious injury had resulted from an ATV accident, he said.

The guidelines included recommendations that children under 12 not be allowed to ride the bikes and that riders wore helmets.

Under cross-examination by defence counsel Susan Hughes, Mr Pedersen conceded most farmers did not use helmets on the bikes, carried their children as passengers and let their children ride the bikes.

The practice of young children riding the bikes on farms did occur but it was becoming less acceptable.

Mr Pedersen said he still owned a farm but did not work on it. His farm did not use ATVs because of the cost and the number of "near misses".

The court heard yesterday that ACC had dealt with 50 cases in the past 12 months where children were involved in accidents on ATVs.

The Crown will call 15 witnesses at the trial, which is expected to last four days. Among them will be ATV experts, police officers and ACC staff.

Today the jury will be taken to see the quad bike, still in storage at the New Plymouth police station.