Creating a set of rules that dump organizers in it, in order to protect the FRA is not the answer.
Safety legislation is not about guaranteeing absolute safety or eliminating risk absolutely, neither of which are possible.
It is built around managing risk in "as far as is reasonably practicable" It is about defining best practise and defining procedures and checklists that manage risk as far as is practicable, and keeping an audit trail to demonstrate that it was done. Then if the worst happens you can show you followed procedures designed to reduce the risk.
Even in the first few pages you see a buck shift from the FRA onto operators done in way that makes it impossible for race organisers to defend themselves at all.
These absolutes should not be written down as they are, and there are many more like them.
"Should weather conditions on the hills be of such severity as to endanger competitors"
"Compulsory sections MUST NOT include hazards or dangerous sections"
"not cause a risk of accidents to runners because of overcrowding."
Every path contains a trip hazard, and all weathers can be dangerous, any place where runners come together has a risk of accidents. If any competitor trips on anything, rocks or cobbles in compulsory sections (they have them on fells, you know...) it puts the organiser in violation of FRA rules at present.
So it should be rewritten by someone able to draft legal documents, using proper caveats eg say something like:
"compulsory sections should be inspected and risk assessed in as far is is reasonably practicable, and any unusual hazards beyond what is normal for fell race terrain should be avoided or alerted to competitors before the start of the race, organisers should retain copies of the risk assessment, and a record of the means of communicating unusual hazards to competitors"
Only in that way does an organiser have a cat in hells chance of defending if someone falls in a compulsory section. If there is a very deep hidden hole, that someone looking at the course should find with reasonable diligence, the organiser should find it and notify people or steer around it. If no person could reasonably have been expected to find it on a practical inspection. Still OK. You did what was practicable for inspecting for hazards and such is life .Ordinary rocks or cobbles do not count. It is a fell race!
I well remember Gavin Bland falling in the last few metres turning into the finish winning duddon race, and then being out for months with a broken hip or similar. With the rules above he would have a case for negligence against the organiser for breaching FRA rules, loss of earnings, the full monte, since he clearly tripped on something, and the fact he tripped proved it was a hazard. And hazards are not allowed in the rules of fell races in compulsory sections!!. You could make the finish "non compulsory" of course, but that kind of defeats the object of a fell race.
The drafting is IMHO full of holes. It needs "unreasonable" "unusual" "reasonably practical" " as far as is possible" - all sorts of words that are commonly used in legal drafting to make document claims safe and possible and leave the parties less exposed. I can only say that I had assumed the document would be reviewed by somebody with a legal mind in order to help reduce rather than increase the chance of negligence claims being made. IMHO the reverse is presently true.
Whatever..
If I were a fell race organiser, I would cancel the race with immediate effect until the FRA decided to revise the rules to help protect both me the organiser and FRA both, instead of buck shifting it to me in a way that leaves me exposed wholly unable to defend myself because of the words above and similar.
Safety is about attention to detail and making sure.
Take documents. We do not seem to get the basics of even that right.
At present there are two documents floating in the ether with similar names , one undated and that must NOT happen, and procedures should prevent it happening.
http://www.fellrunner.org.uk/pdf/com...fety_Rules.pdf
http://www.fellrunner.org.uk/pdf/com...quirements.pdf
Guess which one presently links from the homepage? the out of date one: or it did until very recently And that may never be corrected if someone has not noticed the slight change in name.
The document should tell you if it is a draft, current or superceded and when and if it came into force. To act professionally - and safely- the documents themselves need a changelog. As an outsider I have no idea looking at them which supercedes the other, since one is undated.
I am simply suggesting now that there are a core of ideas, to get them drafted properly, in a way which protects all concerned, not just the FRA. And as regards documents, procedures, checklists and so on, do what corporate safety would do , and put those documents under proper change control. It is not a big deal. It is just safer.
I don't mean to be offensive to anyone but I cannot help but feel it is all being done in an amateur way, at a time when we need to be far more robust and professional to defend against outside claims.
A school just had to pay out thousands because a kid tripped on a lump on an ordinary school playing field. That is the world we live in. I hate these claims solicitors, and one in particular in liverpool. I do not know how they sleep at night. But that is the world we live in. So telling race organisers that there "must be no hazards" in compulsory sections without even the word "unusual" is crass. Great for the FRA to get off the hook if it happens, but putting a noose round the organisers necks with no chance of them ever removing it, and announcing open season for these rats of claims solicitors.
I am not giving legal advice, just an unqualified opinion.
Originally Posted by alwaysinjured
Creating a set of rules that dump organizers in it, in order to protect the FRA is not the answer.
I feel that I understand and want to trust what you say, but am wary the trust might be broken.
