ANOTHER week, another quad bike incident.

This time police seized one in West Bowling after receiving calls about it being driven in a dangerous way and causing a nuisance, which led to its female rider being arrested and reported “for driving other than in accordance with a licence, driving without third party insurance and driving in a manner likely to cause danger.”

I’m not sure what the current tally is but I reckon it’s considerably higher than the figure, revealed by West Yorkshire Police earlier this year, of 1,000 seizures since the launch of its Bradford Anti-Social Vehicle Team – nicknamed the Quad Squad – in July 2014.

And the catalogue of anti-social behaviour goes on. In January, residents in Eccleshill and Thorpe Edge reported verges being torn up and fences damaged and said the problems had been going on for more than three years.

One of the nastiest incidents was reported in February when motorists reported quad bikers among a gang of scooter and motorbike riders intimidating other road users – including both car drivers and motorcyclists – by dangerously boxing them in and hurling abuse at them.

The rank stupidity witnessed by police in other incidents has included a quad bike being driven on the roads by a boy of 13, another using a mobile phone while riding and a complete idiot using one with a small child sitting in front of him, to name but a few.

It’s hard to tell whether the culprits lack common sense, are deliberately ignoring the rules or simply don’t care.

It’s easy to say that quad bikes themselves should be banned from our roads altogether but, like most things in life, it’s not quite that simple.

Quad bikes, or all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), were invented mainly for agricultural use and are a very useful light machine for many farmers, horticultural growers, gamekeepers and the like and many of them have little choice but to use public roads to move them around from one piece of land to another.

Banning their use on roads completely would cause unnecessary difficulties for people legitimately trying to go about their business. And why should they suffer because of the actions of a few morons?

An agricultural quad bike can be registered as a concessionary vehicle with zero-rated vehicle tax but it must be licensed for road use and must have a valid number plate and a minimum of third party insurance.

Abuse of the rules is covered to some extent because the law states you can only use an agricultural quad bike on the road if travelling less than 1.5 km between sites where it is being used for agricultural purposes.

To travel on the roads, all quad bikes must display registration plates to the front and rear, have the correct lights and be of an approved type. Drivers must have a full car licence (or full Category B1 motorcycle licence if it was issued before January 1997).

And the law says you must have at least Third Party insurance at all times, even if they’re not in use.

The fact is, though, that most of them can’t legally be used on the road because they don’t meet road safety standards.

All of that becomes irrelevant, however, when you ask why anyone other than an agricultural worker actually needs a quad bike at all?

They are certainly no safer than motorbikes, as the numerous tragic incidents surrounding their use betrays; they are noisy; they can’t carry passengers (in most cases); and their riders take huge risks by travelling without helmets or other protective clothing.

Like using trail bikes on bitumen-surfaced roads, they don’t serve any genuinely useful purpose and, rather, have become adopted by those who use them as a symbol of non-conformity, a way of deliberately flouting non-compliance with the rules and regulations that law-abiding citizens live by.

The only answer to this menace is to ban their use completely for anything other than compulsorily-registered agricultural-related use. And to throw the book at anyone caught breaking the rules.

* Learning to cook can give children a healthy start

YOU DON’T need to be a Masterchef contestant to make good food so it’s great to see cooking lessons on the menu for families in some parts of the city under the Better Start Bradford initiative.

Supplying children with healthy food – and teaching them how to feed themselves properly – is incredibly important in giving them the best start in life, both in boosting their future health and tackling child obesity. If parents have the confidence to create nutritional meals themselves, there is every chance their children will pick up the same valuable skills.

* Innovative scheme gives hope of a better future for refugees

BEING TORN away from your family as a result of death or war, and whisked away to a foreign country, can be devastating to a child’s confidence as well as his or her ability to thrive in the future.

Too many refugee or orphaned migrant children struggle to survive in care and find adapting to a completely different way of life and culture a daunting task.

Many need all the help they can get so the new mentoring programme launched by Bradford-based charity Mercy Mission UK is to be welcomed for its innovative approach to tackling the problem.

It has trained volunteer mentors, including an assistant head, a university lecturer and a medical director, to take these young people under their wing and help them become more confident, independent and engaged with their new communities. They deserve our every support.