Australia’s Wicked Campers has removed almost its entire fleet of backpacker tourist vans from Queensland roads after investigations into vehicle safety. The Queensland Government pursued the backpacker hire company after random compliance checks in Cairns in 2009 alerted authorities to investigate State-wide.
Wicked voluntarily decommissioned 77 of the 86 in the Queensland fleet when asked to submit them for safety tests. Of the remaining nine, five were taken off the road for mechanical faults such as structural rust, defective seating, oil leaks, steering components and severe accident damage.
It’s certainly not the first time Wicked Campers has made the news. In July 2008 the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau ordered Wicked to remove sexist, misogynistic and racist slogans from their vans. Some of these read: “Women are like banks – once you withdraw you lose interest” and “Save a whale – harpoon a Jap”.
If you’re not familiar with Wicked Campers, it rents old delivery vans that have been converted into campers with graffiti work on the body. It has provided a cheap and fun mode of transport for thousands of backpackers on their road trips around Australia.
The road trip is something of a right of passage that all serious travellers have embarked on at some point in their lives somewhere. Wicked Campers outlines this philosophy on their website: ”We believe in the experience of the roadtrip. It can change the way you see yourself, the world, and the world around you. It’s about getting something out of the journey itself, rather than worrying about how fast you can get to your destination; what’s the hurry? A roadtrip is a philosophy of life, a way of learning about yourself, an experience, a way to test yourself, a way to grow up…the possibilities are endless.”
Unfortunately for Wicked, these possibilities now include skidding off the road, being stranded by the road for days or fined by police for the poor safety of the van according to Welsh Backpackers Bex Puttock and Tim Wallsgrove.
Puttock and Wallsgrove labelled the vans “death traps” and set up a Facebook site “Wicked Campers rent out death traps“. The couple said on Facebook that handing money to Wicked “could be risking your life” and outlined how their car overturned due to poor brakes and bald tyres. Their Facebook group is “to unite all those who have been ripped off, had their trips ruined, or their lives put at risk from accidents in unroadworthy Wicked campervans”.
Wicked Campers owner-director John Webb is the only one defending the vans at present. He said the vans were safe and could not understand why they had been targeted. He said they had voluntarily taken 50 vans, or five percent of their fleet, off the road in the past year, which was “normal for every rental company”.
I actually have a credit with Wicked Campers that I need to use by June this year. I’ve always had concerns with what’s on the bonnet of a Wicked Camper, but with those concerns now turning to what’s underneath it, I might have to give my dreams of a roadtrip through Western Australia a rethink.
