POTD 03/12/07

[andy230]

The health and safety requirements effectively prevent the old sit round a fire type rally (unless you take a massive risk and just go for it)

I'm not with you.  How so andy?

Can we not all just sign a disclaimer??  We are able to do dangerous things (racing, bungee jumps, etc), but can we not just accept that there is no come back if worst happens and you get hot things in your eye??

Not that I'm advocating blindness, but the chances of it happening are slim.  Yes it occaisionally happens, but can we not just accept that its on our own heads?

a

[Andy M]

For a proper event, the disclaimer would have to be approved by the organisers public liabilty insurance company and the landowners, so the first problem is getting some ****wit 17-year old call centre operatives to actually call an underwriter. If you are lucky this will actually get beyond the "computer sez no" stage and you'll have some sort of cover. What the underwriter will do however is limit the cover. This is pretty fair when you consider that the courts will take years not to enforce the disclaimer. "I was so excited about the rally, that I signed the disclaimer without reading it and then got drunk and fell in the fire", will actually work in a UK court as a means to get cash out of an insurance company. Once their cash runs out, the club or landowner pays and people loose their life savings/houses.

True, it's not insurmoutable. People have bonfires on bonfire night every year. The tickets simply tell people that the fire burns (for the stupid ones) and they should not touch it, eat it, put it up their noses etc. (for the really stupid ones). What you'll then see is the organisers do is a very strict risk assesment and have tight controls to get info the event (make sure everyone has a ticket with the info on). There will be a roped limit a few meters from the fire, people in orange jackets will walk just outside this, there will be people with fire exstingushers and first aid kits, mobiles with 99 already dialed etc. All these people require some sort of briefing before the event and can't drink, join in the event to any great extent and so on. If there is a problem you then add a list of precautions you took against Mr. Drunkandstupids claim and hopefully don't end up loosing your house.

Bungee jumping is perhaps an interesting one. If it goes wrong the bungeeer tends to end up dead? This is better for the underwriter than having some bloke on crutches turn up at the hearing. Juries don't feel sorry for someone videod 10 mintues before slamming techillas unless they turn up in a cast and say they can't stand the taste anymore and have to stick to orange juice due the mental anguish of being a muppet! It always surprises me that the insurance companies don't have cute puppy they can bring to court but that might just be me being cynical (I get fed up with the sob stories some people will accept; "I was driving my 44 tonner with a known brake failure because my mate might be sh****g my wife and I needed to get home" for example)!

For a big rally I can see this would all work via the insurance route. You can probably find a few club stalwarts willing to spend the evening patrolling. To have 20 of us round a fire while another four walk round it in orange jackets it's getting a bit silly. For a group to informally agree to turn up at a campsite where any member of the public can camp and have a fire is IMHO also not a problem (but I'm not a lawyer), the campsite is responsible for the people off the street. It probably becomes a problem when it becomes a club event, for example by having an advert in the mag but that's another question all together.

It's a can of worms and you are right it shouldn't be such a big deal. The problem is it has become a big deal and organisers are finding it easier to just ban everything.

I think this just turned into the Friday morning rant and it's only Thursday 

Andy

[trophydave]

There are some interesting points raised here.I belong to a small local bike club with about 20 members.Every year the subject of MAG or BMF affiliation-and use of their public liability insurance-comes up.We seem fairly evenly split about wether or not to bother,so often don't.The attitude of some members is that if anyone tries to claim for something they will just tell them to ''f*** off'' which these days really isn't the way to go.
 We put on two events a year.One is a bike show in the pub car park in the summer,the other a xmas do with a band etc.Last xmas a girl managed to trap her finger in a toilet door,taking the end off it(the finger not the door)She claimed against the pub.If I have understood things correctly if you have an event at a venue thier insurance will cover you-I could be wrong tho'.
 Ride outs are a different question.One member is in the local IAM group.A couple of years ago on a social run someone threw their bike into a field.A few weeks later the organisers get a letter threatening legal action.I do not know of the outcome but for a while before all runs out a disclaimer had to be signed and social runs have now been stopped.Why?Possible risk of legal action should anything go wrong,who knows?
 Personally if I throw my bike up the road and it's my fault I expect to pay up and sort it out not go chasing the organisers of a run out but not all people think like that.You tend to be alright with a group of mates it's when someone new turns up out to impress.

[andy230]

Hmmmm.  Sad.

Maybe I'm being pedantic, and I think this is kinda becoming an academic discussion, but...

What about simply not organising club rallies...  I mean, of course we do arrange to all meet up, and camp (and have a fire!) and go for a ride, and then get pissed up, etc

But do we have to do it under the club banner?

Why not just have a group of friends all meet up, and have a laugh.  But without "official" Club affiliation?  I know its not really the spirit of the thing, but it would let us have life!

And a fire!!   And having to suffer GC marching up in down in his Orange jacket like Captain Mainwairing!!



a

[guest18]

Hmm interesting... as most of you know, I do a bit of diving, and when I dive with the club I have to stay strictly within the training organisations "safe diving guidelines" in order not to cause insurance/liability issues.
When I dive with mates and it's not a "club dive" then I can modify these slightly... 

or put another way, ask me as a club member how to do a rolling burnout away from the bridge tolls and I'll tell you it's very silly and probably illegal so don't do it, ask me as a passing friend and you may well get a different answer!

Maybe we should meet up for "Not the Thumper Club Rally"?  or would we have to wear eighties clothes again. 

Oh, and don't you diss Napoleon! 

[guest7]

Dads A team - lol 

As for public liability, I'll tell the GS club story again (as I heard it). On a rideout they all arrived at a car park and as they were stopping a rider rode into the back of another bike, toppled and broke her wrist. On her insurance claim form she wrote that she was at a rally and on an organised rideout. The club didn't at that time have Public Liability Insurance ('PLI' from now on)

The end result of the subsequent wrangling was that the organiser ended up with a bill for £16,000 

The GS club ended up splitting over this issue because the head honchos decided to invest in PLI and charged a membership fee that included this. The other group went the other way and organised their own events without PLI cover. To add to the misery the second bunch of gits sometimes scheduled their events to clash with the events of the first group. Not nice.

Now, we can all agree that:
1. the rider shouldn't have said she was at an organised event
2. PLI cover is a PITA
3. Having to run a club with all this in mind seems tiresome
4. The group who don't have PLI and run events are asking for trouble
5. GS's are quite heavy and overly-complicated

But, the fact remains, I can't imagine any club official willingly leaving themselves open to a £16K bill.

Back to the TC. Yes, we should stop calling it a rally and the publicity should read as an open invitation to meet up at a third party's venue. That way we can restrict the sort of bollocks that seems to have annoyed people this year.

However, we still need PLI for our attendance at bike shows, most organisers insist on this (although I can't recall Stafford ever asking).

Cheers
GC

[Steffan]

Why is one a bunch of "gits" and the other not. I will not bore you with my opinion of most GS riders I have met personally and or online

Steffan

[Andy M]

Why is one a bunch of "gits" and the other not. I will not bore you with my opinion of most GS riders I have met personally and or online

Steffan

The oil head GS does seem to attract an odd crowd. All GPS and big tin boxes yet a lot claim they'd never go off road and don't go any further afield than Normandy  Then of course there are the ones who think Timbuktoo is nice weekend ride out  What is weird is that Triumph Tiger riders don't seem to grow the Touratech fetish the same way  There again, stones and glass houses and all that, as a twin/two stroke member of a singles club with a number of camping stove/MZ/Landrover "enthusiasts", who am I to talk 

The rally-not a rally thing is IMHO reasonably easy to sort out. If a member of or the whole "committee" call the event (eg Stafford or the annual) and then book things (food, band, camping, blah blah blah) it's a rally. If a member says "anybody fancy meeting at....", and there is nothing organised it's a meet up. The first needs controls and insurance, the second doesn't. I don't know about the GS Club incident (fell out with them long before) but if if morphed from one to the other I can see there'd be issues.

Anyhow, I always saw GC as more of a Sgt. Wilson sort of figure  You need more of a Cpl. Jones for fire marshal 

Andy

[trophydave]

Now, we can all agree that:
1. the rider shouldn't have said she was at an organised event
2. PLI cover is a PITA
3. Having to run a club with all this in mind seems tiresome
4. The group who don't have PLI and run events are asking for trouble
Cheers
GC

Agreed,but where does that leave us in the wider(nonTC) sense?I am on the commitee of my local club and the last thing I(and anyone else)want is a big bill because someone has fallen off their bike though no fault but their own.
As an example,take the Dragon.I get the tickets,arrange the digs for the Friday,usually arrange the route and lead the run.This is not because I am some power mad loon,far from it,I enjoy doing it and it probably would not get done otherwise.Does this mean that until we enter the actual rally site I am some kind or organiser?I hope not,I don't want the responsibility,it is just a bunch of mates on a ride out.

[Andy M]

If these guys are your mates you have nothing to fear IMHO. If there is a problem, you won't be named on the insurance forms except perhaps as a witness. Even if they did it's like you inviting them to the pub and ringing for the taxi home, you have a social connection, so it's a social event.

If it turns into a mate of a mate of your mate type thing be you should probably be more careful. If it all ends up as a game of Chinese whispers and people think you're running it and then you act like it, you'll be treated as the organiser if anything happens. I'd avoid taking money (big part of having a contract with them), providing route sheets etc. and encourage the people you don't really know to ride their own ride even if you all go the same way at the same time (so try "shall I set off first, see you there" rather than "follow me"). Probably better to make potential muppets stand on their own two feet and risk them not turning up than take responsibility for them.


It's a sad state of affairs to be honest and not a very clear one as to when a social event becomes an organised one

Andy

[Steffan]

Actually I didn't want to mention it before but I put in a claim for the damage to the bullet and mentioned that GC was the organiser of this club event at which the damage occurred. They said something about who was the club's insurer...oops maybe I should have stayed schtumm

Sorry GC!!

Steffan