First to say,Originally Posted by Lefty
I take my hat off to all race organisers. They do a stirling job, often having to cope with crass stupidity on the part of a minority of competitors. I also take my hat off to the committees charged with the thankless task of trying to organise all the above, and cover the backside of the FRA and the ROs in the process.
People are fallible. Mistakes and bad things will happen. The trick is to find a few procedures that help to limit the likelihood and reduce the scale of adverse consequence if any of them do happen.
BUT
In this litigious age, it is also a case that the documents are not just there for safety, they will be scrutinized by lawyers for loopholes and to blame someone should the worst things happen.
My worry is that a claims lawyer or an insurance company could ride a coach and horses through that document which is fine as a non prescriptive statement of good intentions, but it is not a definitive checklist of imperatives and actions detailing on whom responsibility falls in order to determine whether rules are broken, indeed to make sure they are not. Some are impossible to achieve because of lack of legal precision or normal qualifications such as "in as far as is reasonably possible" or in safety legislation "reasonably practicable" tends to be used in place of "reasonably possible"
Take a very simple example. The start of the borrowdale race, down that horrible stony cobbled path, where if you leave a gap of more than a foot somebody jumps to the gap in front. If you do not leave a gap you cannot see, and I and many others have tripped and fallen because of it. Fortunately no serious injury yet, but certainly a few bangs and scrapes. Serious could certainly happen.
Point is the borrowdale race organiser is ipso facto apparently in violation of rule3. The field size (if greater than one or two) is such that there clearly is a risk of accidents caused by overcrowding in that first half mile, ie the field is too big for the course according to that rule as it stands.
The rules are so much hot air until the day, somebody has a serious injury, goes headlong, bashes a rock with a head after which serious even debilitating injuries could happen. Then some smartarse prat of a lawyer will point out just how weak that document is, and how the organiser was negligent for failing to put on a race that complied with rule 3, that path was overcrowded and not an adequate route for the size of the field, ergo his clients injuries are the fault of the demonstrable negligence of the RO for failing to put on a safe race as per rulebook.
Ker ching. Thousands of pounds of claims and costs. Tens or more if you are unlucky.
Since the standard of proof is "balance of probability" not "beyond reasonable doubt" the threshold is low for these worms of lawyers who try to wring society dry by taking such claims on conditional fee.
It needed the "in as far as is reasonably practicable" to make it workable as a rule book. That case the organiser telling everyone "to watch themselves and not go mad in the first half mile, it is cobbled and people can and do trip", is a reasonably practicable option for trying to manage inevitable early overcrowding because of the size of the field.
Without such a rider, if ever an organiser does lose control of monitoring for whatever reason he is now seemingly in violation of the rule 3. And so on.
Race organisers cannot guarantee a safe race or guarantee to comply with the imperatives implicit in rule 3. They can only be expected to do what is reasonably possible to achieve that.
There are also many cases where it fails to translate good intentions into auditable actions.
Take "competitors MUST know what to do at check points". Who is mandated by that? If they do not know what to do, is that a failing of the organiser? the competitor? the marshall? Who is to blame if it all fails and goes pear shaped? How can you prove that somebody "knew" and who is responsible if they did not. If they forget as a result of age or conditions or hypoxia from running too hard, have they breached the rule? It should be translated as auditable actions. I rarely see the word "Know" in contracts for the reason of it being hard to determine, and on the rare occasions I have it is qualified with "Knew or reasonably should have known"
It would have been better to define a procedure, not an intention or outcome of "knowing" for example:
"The race organiser shall by means of written instruction on a registration form to be signed by all competitors, declare the procedure for checking numbers to be followed by competitors and marshalls at checkpoints . A separate notice where applicable shall be shown to all competitors of any changes made on the day to advertised route ,advertised kit requirements or advertised checkpoints and procedures for them before signing a registration form . Competitors must familiarise themselves with those procedures. By signing the registration form, all competitors agree that they shall follow all procedure laid down there, the rules of FRA competition in general, and any reasonable instructions of marshalls or organiser. Marshalls shall also sign to say they have seen the procedures agreed for the day, and thereby agree to use all reasonable endeavours to operate the procedures laid down as above. By signing marshalls further agree that should it become impossible or no longer practicable to follow the procedures, or should the procedures not have been followed in respect of or by any or all competitors, to inform the race organiser by the earliest reasonable means of that failure, consistent with needing to continue manning the checkpoint until otherwise instructed or relieved, or the duty is complete.
Whatever.
Point is you know who is supposed to be doing what.
If the competitors do not "Know" after that (dozy sods, many of them, in one ear and out the other), it is not the fault of the RO, the marshalls or the FRA. You have the audit trail to prove you told them. A lot of corporate safety arse cov ering is now like that. Proving when you trained somebody what to do,so you are not to blame when they do the opposite.
I do not presume to advise anyone on what the rules should be, I only suggest that they should be a statement of actions not intent, sufficient to determine who is responsible for what in procedures.
But the one that I picked up on applied to me. Clearly mistlite 130 are still being "marketed as waterproof" by both PeteBLand and stated as compliant by innovate, whether or not they are (not). So that the form of words "marketed as" could be a problem in the hands of one of these nasty little worms of claims lawyers.
That is why I think the wording needs to be more contractual and less a statement of good intentions - of which the proverb says the road to hell is paved.
Before anyone asks, no I am not a lawyer, not able or implying I am giving advice, nor am I advising. I simply state a personal opinion, which may be wrong.
But I was a company secretary of a plc and responsible for contractual matters, and director of a bespoke contracting company, creating many custom contracts a year for services and actions of people, so I know a lot about how people can drive coaches and horses through wording that is not robust enough. Which prompts my comment, the document is too woolly for my liking, and I worry what one of these nasty little claims lawyers could do with it, if something bad happens and he sensed a payday.
I was also a technical director responsible for development of and operation of some very nasty automated equipment so ended up studying operational safety and legislation, became the responsible safety person for that growing company, and have a certificate to prove it somewhere!
So in the effort to reduce the possibilities of an adverse claim, I actually think the lack of precision could make matters worse should push come to shove.
