In May 1978 the House of Representatives Road Safety Committee reported on an Inquiry into Motorcycle and Bicycle Safety. Motorcycle and bicycle helmet safety was covered briefly in that Report and the Committee made a number of recommendations.

Principle among the recommendations on motorcycle helmets was that the helmet committee of the Standards Association of Australia (SAA) review the Australian Standard 1698 as soon as possible and that the review process include the views of user, importing and manufacturing groups. The committee also recommended that the Commonwealth Department of Transport introduce a system of post-accident analysis of motorcyclists' helmets and that the compliance to AS1698 of available helmets be monitored by a government sponsored independant testing agency and that the results be widely disseminated.

6. The current inquiry into Motorcycle and Bicycle Helmet Safety was commenced by the standing Committee on Road Safety in May 1984. That Committe announced the Inquiry following a preliminary hearing of allegations that a number of motorcycle helmets on the market were in contravention of the mandatory Australian Standard. That Committe believed that these allegations were of a serious enough nature to warrant an Inquiry into motorcycle and bicycle helmet safety and the enforcement of helmet safety standards by the SAA and the Trade Practices Commission.

7. In June 1984, the Road Safety Committee 1984 reported on the motorcycle helmet aspect on the current Inquiry. In this Interim Report the committee found evidence that the SAA had not adequately observed the requirements of the published standard in its certification of helmets and in their routine testing. The committee concluded that the problems were associated with the interpretation of the standards by the SAA, the lack of clear lines of authorisation in these interpretations and failures in the licensing test procedures. As this standard was called up in the mandatory product safety standard declared under the Trade Practices Act, this meant that the mandatory standard was also not being fully observed. The Standard AS1698 was first made mandatory in November 1978.

8. The committee repeated the recommendations of the 1978 Report that the compliance of helmets available in the marketplace to Australian Standard 1698 be monitored by a Government sponsored independant testing agency and that the results be widely disseminated.

The committee found that despite the Government's favourable response to recommendations of the 1978 report, these recommendations had not been fully implemented. The Interim Report noted that if these recommendations had been fully implemented there may not have been any need for the latest inquiry into motorcycle helmet safety. The government responded to the Interim Report on Motorcycle and Bicycle Helmet Safety in October 1984 accepting all of the recommendations.