Liability insurance

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:22:21 UTC, (Michael)
wrote:

: A lot less. It's much slower and much lighter, and probably is
: capable of delivering no more than a quarter of the energy on impact
: that a Nimbus can deliver.

I'm going to guess a bit, but assuming that a Nimbus weighs about 5
times as much as a hang-glider all up (750 vs 150kg) and flies twice
as fast (60 vs 30kt), it'll have twenty times the energy on impact...

Ian

--

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:10:06 UTC, "Steve"
wrote:

: The post said the "You and your heirs are promising to not sue in the event
: of many
: types of accidents". I doubt this would hold up in court. How do you get
: your underage kids give up their rights ? They can't ign the form and I
: doubt the courts would let the legal guardian take their rights away Does
: your spouse sign the waiver and agree not to sue?

I believe that UK gliding clubs have given up the disclaimer of this
sort (lovingly knbown as the "blood chit") because it was legally
untenable.

Ian

--

What is the liability insurance all about ? I thought
it was things like crop damage, damaging vehicles or
buildings, hitting innocent bystanders - either relatively
inexpensive or relatively infrequent claims. But if
it is being abused as a substitute for carrying life
insurance, then that's a whole new bucket of snakes.

Ian



At 13:12 13 June 2004, Ian Johnston wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:22:21 UTC,
(Michael)
wrote:

: A lot less. It's much slower and much lighter, and
probably is
: capable of delivering no more than a quarter of the
energy on impact
: that a Nimbus can deliver.

I'm going to guess a bit, but assuming that a Nimbus
weighs about 5
times as much as a hang-glider all up (750 vs 150kg)
and flies twice
as fast (60 vs 30kt), it'll have twenty times the energy
on impact...

Ian

--

In article ,
Ian Cant wrote:

What is the liability insurance all about ? I thought
it was things like crop damage, damaging vehicles or
buildings, hitting innocent bystanders - either relatively
inexpensive or relatively infrequent claims. But if
it is being abused as a substitute for carrying life
insurance, then that's a whole new bucket of snakes.

Ian

the worst case was a landowner who collected daily use fees, a
certificated but dangerous & indigent instructor, the weather turned,
the student crashed and died. the instructor had no assets to attach,
so the heirs (appropriately) turned to the certificating organization
(USHGA) and (inappropriately) to the landowner. laws have now been
changed to deny liability for landowners provided they allow access for
free; only if they charge, do they have liability. still USHGA is on
the hook for the instructors and commercial pilots, the people most
likely to be sued. with all students and ride passengers signing the
waiver, the organization is theoretically in the clear.

in a nutshell, the liability insurance protects the landowners from
lawsuits due to injuries sustained when they allow HG/PG to occur on
their property.

in other sports like scuba, even though an international organization
certificates the instructors, the instructors provide their own
liability insurance. you can imagine the liability if a scuba
instructor tossed a student into the ocean w/o making sure their air was
on.

Ken

On 9 Jun 2004 16:52:47 GMT, Ian Cant
wrote:

Mike,
Thankyou for the insight, which may very well
be good advice.

However, is there not ALWAYS a conflict of interest
between insurer and insured at claim time ? Having
the SSA as a middleman would not appear to alter that
fact.

The SSA might even be encouraged to become more interested
in overall soaring safety statistics [or at least liability
claim incidents], and develop a more pro-active safety
program. That would hardly be bad for us.

The large pool might well be a captive market for the
duration of any one contract; but at renewal time,
it should also be more attractive to insurers and thus
attract competitive rates.

Am I hopelessly naive ?

Ian
Ian,

It hasn't worked that way in Oz. You can also end up with the
insurance company dictating the rules or the organisation buying the
insurance adding yet more rules over the legal minima to convince the
insurance company not to raise premiums.

Imagine the effect of your SSA disowning you or not getting involved
on the insurance company's decision to pay out.

Hvaning soaring advocacy bodies making too many rules is a really bad
idea.

Right now in Australia someone like Eric Greenwell, who as I
understand, operates a self launcher out of a trailer at an airfield
with no other soaring pilots around cannot be covered by the GFA's
third party insurance as there is a requirement for a second qualified
inspector's signature on the maintenance release for that day.

Yes, we've had a couple of accidents with controls not hooked up or
assembled backwards but what the rocket scientists in the GFA have
ignored is that at least two checks in the current rules were not done
or not done properly to get to this point. Instead of reinforcing the
need to carry out these checks properly they simply added another one
which now has the effect of putting at risk the other person's assets
etc . This will probably end after the first time someone who signs
some else's maintenance release gets sued.

Mike Borgelt