New safety rules

[alwaysinjured]

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

"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.