New safety rules

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Originally Posted by Stolly

Just to be pinickety you surely mean fell racing don't you. I can run in the hills on my own, naked in a blizzard if I want to :)

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Just to lighten the mood. would this race be allowed to go ahead again. I was thinking of organising it.

The previous RO had to flee the country but rumour has it he is organising races in New Zealand now.

I was not on Kit check so can't be held responsible for the lack of full body cover.

Attachment 7232

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Originally Posted by IanDarkpeak

Just to lighten the mood. would this race be allowed to go ahead again. I was thinking of organising it.

The previous RO had to flee the country but rumour has it he is organising races in New Zealand now.

I was not on Kit check so can't be held responsible for the lack of full body cover.

Attachment 7232

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The Master is alive and well in Worsley and Fellmonster not far away either. Good to see them out and about enjoying themselves :)

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Originally Posted by IanDarkpeak

Just to lighten the mood. would this race be allowed to go ahead again. I was thinking of organising it.

The previous RO had to flee the country but rumour has it he is organising races in New Zealand now.

I was not on Kit check so can't be held responsible for the lack of full body cover.


Attachment 7232

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It is pinning the number on that brings water to their eyes!
Especially for the ladies, under the new FRA number rules!

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Originally Posted by alwaysinjured

And also noting plausibility statements that prove the obvious :that if an RO promises water in a desert, and no such water is provided, when somebody dies of thirst the RO can no longer hide behind Volente. You don't need much of a law book for that. So RO assurances matter in the determining the risk that a competitor can be assumed to be accepting in entering a race whatever he signs. That rugby precedent illustrates the point. So I am asking that advice be taken for and on behalf of RO, not the FRA.

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Being an RO is nothing like a rugby referee so I think the analogy is very weak. The rugby referee was a situation where there was repeated defective application of the laws of the game. Eventually a player got injured in full view of the ref. How can an RO be in full view of his competitors?
Also, a ref has direct responsibility for his players. An RO does not, he just organises the race. Now, if your argument is that the rules re-write tries to make the RO look more like a ref, then you have a fair point!

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Originally Posted by Stolly

Just to be pinickety you surely mean fell racing don't you. I can run in the hills on my own, naked in a blizzard if I want to :)

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Erm well, no actually. Not if the current draft of the guidelines are accepted and you decide to run the route of a cancelled race.

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Originally Posted by Wheeze

Being an RO is nothing like a rugby referee so I think the analogy is very weak. The rugby referee was a situation where there was repeated defective application of the laws of the game. Eventually a player got injured in full view of the ref. How can an RO be in full view of his competitors?
Also, a ref has direct responsibility for his players. An RO does not, he just organises the race. Now, if your argument is that the rules re-write tries to make the RO look more like a ref, then you have a fair point!

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I am not arguing anything wheeze: other than several have mentioned that and similar to me over the course of the last few weeks since I got sucked into this thread. The core phrase was not about rugby, or even sight of what was going on, it was:

"Rarely if ever does the law absolve from any obligation of care a person whose acts or omissions are manifestly capable of causing physical harm to others in a structured relationship into which they have entered" The judge went on to say that he did not consider rugby was exempt from that more general principle, he was not limiting it to rugby or similar.

Legal folk seem to think it may be relevant, and it is incumbent on an RO to understand how it might apply to them.

Take a simple example - statement of "fully marked course" - if you fail to do that in a way that someone manages to gets lost, and the worst happens, it will be used as evidence of a failure of duty by act or ommission.

And it was surprising to me at least, who will be the party presenting such as failures of duty should they happen.

I am highlighting the need for advice, and NOT making absurd undertakings in the rules such as "no hazards" or "no climbing" when clearly there are both on some courses. Don't wan't to give these claims vultures any more open goals than we must.

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Originally Posted by wynn

I've just asked the question of the FRA Committee

Can someone please confirm which rules I would be agreeing to if I submit my races into the calendar. This years, the ones that have since become the draft or the ones that aren't done yet....

Awaiting a reply

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To answer the points you raise.


The new Safety guidance is going to be based on the current draft. Small tweaks are being inserted and we are awaiting the coroner's letter following the recent inquest which may cause current drafts to be amended. Very little if anything will come out from the current draft, which I am aware isn't public, and there may be some additions.


Generally I am taking the view of encouraging RO's to register as they can withdraw later but not be in the calendar unless the information is received by 31 Oct.


I understand that you are aware that the current draft has had inserted 'unnecessary' inserted before 'hazards' and I see no chance that this will change.


There was more to this email but not relevant to other RO's

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Originally Posted by wynn

To answer the points you raise.


The new Safety guidance is going to be based on the current draft. Small tweaks are being inserted and we are awaiting the coroner's letter following the recent inquest which may cause current drafts to be amended. Very little if anything will come out from the current draft, which I am aware isn't public, and there may be some additions.


Generally I am taking the view of encouraging RO's to register as they can withdraw later but not be in the calendar unless the information is received by 31 Oct.


I understand that you are aware that the current draft has had inserted 'unnecessary' inserted before 'hazards' and I see no chance that this will change.


There was more to this email but not relevant to other RO's

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Hi Nick sorry to be a pain ... well not really cos i'm still here.
So what you're saying is that "Generally I (FRA Committee) am taking the view of encouraging RO's to register as they can withdraw later but not be in the calendar unless the information is received by 31 Oct."

The rules are not set yet and any RO will have to assume that he/she could fulfil all the requirements. Or have to withdraw their race at a later date....
That's really not good practice.. what happens if a race cannot fulfil the requirements but is still run because they've got it in the calendar... is the insurance void... would anyone know until it was put to the test and who would be held responsible for it going ahead.
Surely the FRA should put back the final date for registering Races until the rules are sorted out, there by giving the RO's at least a chance to decide if they can comply to the new rules or not.

I find it hard to feel like RO's best interest is at heart here - I feel that unless the rules are there to be seen I cannot in all honesty register our races
blank cheques come to mind.... would you do it?
Wx

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Originally Posted by wynn

To answer the points you raise.


The new Safety guidance is going to be based on the current draft. Small tweaks are being inserted and we are awaiting the coroner's letter following the recent inquest which may cause current drafts to be amended. Very little if anything will come out from the current draft, which I am aware isn't public, and there may be some additions.


Generally I am taking the view of encouraging RO's to register as they can withdraw later but not be in the calendar unless the information is received by 31 Oct.


I understand that you are aware that the current draft has had inserted 'unnecessary' inserted before 'hazards' and I see no chance that this will change.


There was more to this email but not relevant to other RO's

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"Unnecessary" That is a very strange word - who knows what that means?
the fell race itself is "Unnecessary"

Let me give you an example that shows how poor that phraseology may be/ proves it as nonsense.

The old nicky nook race. Loved it. No idea if it still runs, not seen it advertised. Would do it again if I saw it.

Coming back to the finish the organiser (great idea) decided not to cross through a river once, but to do so several times in a zig zag. Several of those zigs were "unnecessary" to get from A to B. Indeed there was a bridge, the race could have gone over instead, so crossing the stream bed was "unnecessary" in any normal meaning of the word.

So is that course compliant? who knows?
If someone slipped and broke their backs in crossing that river, and the bridge as it was had been blocked to force people to cross the river, forcing someone to do something unnecessary, do they then have a claim?

Other races opt to go through a stream or river rather than use an adjacent bridge
Are the (slippy) stream beds in that case "unnecessary"?

For goodness sake TAKE SOME ADVICE

"unusual" or better "exceptional" would be more useful drafting...demonstrating that all normal hazards for the terrain still apply, and still pretty useless in explaining what it means.

Better still don't say the course should not contain hazards at all, just put a duty on an organiser to use "reasonable endeavours" to inspect for exceptional hazards in start and finish areas, where people bunch up and find it hard to see, rather than warrant the course hazard free at all. Then provided he does a reasonable inspection, he cannot be blamed for what is concealed. Those words reasonable endeavours have known legal context.

I as a reasonably intelligent guy, and still have **NO CLUE** as to what the committee were even trying to achieve/ by saying "no hazards" or "unnecessary hazards" or what they were trying to outlaw with that.
Please write in plain english instead.

There are a lot of submerged fenceposts bases in the lakes, the base of which several off us have managed to shove through a foot, and for some of us (fortunately not me) it has cost a week or a month of not walking.

If there is one of those on the run in from a race to a finish
is that unusual, exceptional or unnecessary?
Since they can be hidden in tussocky grass, how can you ever find/eliminate?

The overriding question:
Why the F*** say anything at all?

It was never there in the rules before the change.
Why warrant any part hazard free?

The less you say, the more the general rule applies: it is lakeland.
On your own head be it if you race.
If you don't know the problems of lakeland terrain do not race.

Anything you say about removing hazards or not having them is an additional duty on an RO for which they may be called to task.
And if true to form, it will be UKA that calls it as a breach of duty!

I would hazard a guess that word did NOT come from a solicitor, or if it did, I would like to know who, just to know who to avoid when asking for advice in future!

NOT IMPRESSED
The campaign for clear english will be on your case, not just the legal guys.

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Originally Posted by alwaysinjured

With respect, I am deliberately trying to avoid giving anyone any advice in this saga, or suggest anything other than saying only "take competent advice", which seems sadly lacking in some of the statements made in some documents I see. I simply noted what FRA had said about their own limitation - with the implied suggestion you talk to them to ask them what they hoped to achieve by it. The civil and criminal risks are clearly different.

It mattered to me more that the FRA PERCEIVE a risk to their own officers, believed to big enough for them to act on it, than whether the limitation is actually effective in reducing it. I assume (or hope) they took advice. So clearly even they perceive a risk, whether or not they try to play it down in presenting it that risk to the RO.

For that reason until provoked by unconditional ( therefore incomplete) statement of volente by Graham, into quoting (for example) one precedent that disagrees with him? grump? are they the same?, I refuse to trade legal blows with anyone. I am simply pointing out some of the more nonsensical phrases in the new rules that hint that no such advice was taken, and that the interests of the RO are clearly different than FRA, they are far more exposed.

And also noting plausibility statements that prove the obvious :that if an RO promises water in a desert, and no such water is provided, when somebody dies of thirst the RO can no longer hide behind Volente. You don't need much of a law book for that. So RO assurances matter in the determining the risk that a competitor can be assumed to be accepting in entering a race whatever he signs. That rugby precedent illustrates the point. So I am asking that advice be taken for and on behalf of RO, not the FRA.

I am encouraged by Madeleine's statement of having that process in hand, which is the first sign that the issues are being taken seriously, provided that RO opinion is actively sought before making any of it "fell running law". Marshalls should make sure understand what they are letting themselves in for before volunteering too.

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You see, you've done it again. All i'm getting here is white noise. Try and stand on the roof and twiddle the aerial a little bit.