REQUIRING quad bike riders on public highways to wear helmets would “make the law consistent with other similar vehicles”, a Labour MP has suggested.

Judith Cummins warned quad bikes “are tools, not toys and their careless, reckless and unsafe use on our streets is a menace”.

The MP for Bradford South set out a series of measures which she said would “provide consistency, to protect road users and legitimate owners of quads and to stop the blight of their dangerous and anti-social use on our streets”.

Ms Cummins told MPs: “This Bill will promote safe use of road-legal quads and reduce the number of off-road quads on our streets by making wearing of helmets compulsory, making necessary the installation of vehicle immobilisers, making registration of all quad bikes compulsory, empowering police to remove problem off-road quads from our streets permanently.”

She added: “The constant loud, piercing drone of quad bikes is an all too familiar sound in many of our towns and cities.

“While these vehicles have important and legitimate uses in agriculture and related industries, they are tools, not toys and their careless, reckless and unsafe use on our streets is a menace and my constituents have had enough.”

Ms Cummins said “our streets are plagued by quads legal only for off-road use which do not require registration”.

She added: “While the anti-social use of quads centres in cities and the suburbs, the vehicles used are often stolen from farms… These are vehicles designed for herding animals in fields, not tearing up Tarmac in our towns and cities.”

The NFU, she said, estimated that “some 1,100 quad bikes are stolen from farms each year, costing farmers upwards of £3 million”.

Ms Cummins said data from West Yorkshire Police showed anti-social quad use was a “growing problem”, with “over 10,000 reports of anti-social use of quads and bikes in West Yorkshire in 2021, a shocking 42 per cent rise on the previous year”.

The MP raised the noise disturbance of quad bikes and damage caused to the local landscape, plus the risks to other road users, pedestrians and drivers themselves.

By making immobilisers a requirement, theft would be made harder, she said, and reduce the number of quad bikes getting on the streets in the first place.

Ms Cummins said the Bill also proposed extending the registration scheme to licensed road-legal quads to cover all quad bikes, including those allowed for off-road use only, to establish a “clear line of ownership right from the point of sale”.

She said: “Police must be given the power to seize and destroy nuisance quads, taking them off the streets permanently. We need to stop seeing these vehicles as toys.”

Her Quad Bikes Bill was listed for a second reading on May 6, but is unlikely to become law due to a lack of parliamentary time.