[Closed] Does "Barry Knows Best?"

Its a horrible thought / scenario, Jamba...

and a complete nonsense. This case changes nothing at all

Will the insurance just pay out now or are they likely to take it to appeal?

TJ, we don't know it's a nonsense yet. I don't know any rich instructors. They might choose to find another way to make a living. Most I know do it for the fun/lifestyle aspect but a worry of something like that over your head could easily suck the fun out of it.

Is the guy still coaching? I'd take a session with him out of curiosity if he is.

I've been coached by good and bad but neither made me feel particularly at risk.

Crap judgement in my view 'steep' 'novice' - important words used that mean nothing in the facts of the case.
How can you not know something is beyond your limits when you've already bloody ridden it!
Angry. Doesn't effect me in the slightest, but it's made me angry!

Perhaps golf is a better pastime for some people. I do feel for the guy, paralysis is no joke but to then royally screw someone over for your own obvious mistake is awful. The bottom line is that Barrys is now and has never been anything but a fully green super easy child friendly run. This was an accident pure and simple.

Perhaps we should regress to the state when mountain bikers taught themselves or learned from friends, put a £ on it and this shit happens. Can I expect to get sued for showing a tourist a new run in the hills if they cock up and stack it?

Could be the end of mtb instruction ?

Can I expect to get sued for showing a tourist a new run in the hills if they cock up and stack it?

This changes nothing.
(I say that as an outdoor instructor close to a few incidents, up to and watching my boss go through a fatal accident enquiry in the outdoors.)

£3M for falling off a bike. Brilliant. What a joke.

Bloke sounds like a total prat to me.

As said before, it might not necessarily be him that is bringing the case. Might be his employer, or his insurance company for example. You can't condemn him for what you don't know.

The road.cc article states that the instructor was qualified, but does not mention what qualification.

Cycling UK/the CTC appear to be one of the main (only?) bodies issuing MTB instructor qualifications, and MTB instuctors with that qualification can get liability insurance from Cycling UK.

Could be the end of mtb instruction ? If they can't get liability insurance at a reasonable cost the sector will be die.

If the instructor in this case had cover from the Cycling UK insurance scheme, [u]and[/u] if that scheme has most/all of the market (which is very possible with a niche type scheme like that), then this accident and court award could certainly have a major effect on the price of cover. The insurer will obviously have the reserves to pay the award, but the case would make it review the scheme carefully to consider whether it will be profitable in the future. It's very unlikely that the insurer would stop underwriting the scheme and that Cycling UK could not find a replacement insurer to underwrite it, but the premiums paid by instructors (passed onto customers in the course costs) could rise significantly.

A few thoughts:

- is there a recognised code of practice for MTB tuition? The article indicates the instructor was negligent in properly assessing the skill level of the rider. Procedures and guidance for assessing skill levels and how to train skills are something I would expect to see in a code of practice.

- what auditing and re-testing do Cycling UK and any other providers do of instructors? It's not enough to issue a qualification: an accrediting body needs to take active steps to monitor the performance of those who hold its qualification and use it to attract customers. According to the scanned image I've seen of the Certificate issued by Cycling UK/CTC to one instructor, the Certificate does not have an expiry date or indicate for how long the qualification is valid. The trend now is for any work related type skills qualification to have a limited duration, at the end of which refresher training/re-testing is required.

The things above are part of a maturing field/'industry'. Mountain biking is a relatively new sport compared with other outdoor sports like climbing and kayaking etc., so probably still has some way to go before the overall standards of training and instruction are as good/mature.

I wonder if I should've sued the bike shop that loaned me a demo bike with semi=slick summer tyres in the rain, when I crashed and broke my neck due to the tyres having no grip on wet roots.
Er, no, cos I'm not a ****.

I wonder if I should've sued the bike shop that loaned me a demo bike with semi=slick summer tyres in the rain, when I crashed and broke my neck due to the tyres having no grip on wet roots.
Er, no, cos I'm not paralysed from the neck down and they were not there instructing me to ride it over said terrain

FTFY

again as I said.

I have a life insurance and critical illness cover policy. If I contract a life limiting condition my insurer pays out to cover my mortgage, loss of earnings, house conversion costs and so on.

If I had to claim on that due to someone else's negligent action, is it unreasonable my insurer would look to his insurer to cover the payout instead?

It is not necessarily the rider that has brought this case.

£3M for falling off a bike. Brilliant. What a joke.

Bloke sounds like a total prat to me.

That and the other similar remarks suggesting that the man should not have sued the instructor are simply stupid ignorant comments.

The fact that his claim has been successful, albeit with 20% contributory negligence, indicates that the court agreed the instructor was negligent and substantially responsible for the accident.

Some people will happily acquire their skills entirely on their own by practicing jumps etc., and accept that any accident or injury is down to themselves, but others will want to have training from a paid expert instructor because it should be a safer and quicker way to learn and improve skills.

If you take money from people to train them in a potentially dangerous sport, then you have a responsibility to provide instruction to certain minimum safety standards. That is why people pay for such training: they lack both the skills and also judgement/knowledge of what they can safely attempt to do, so they rely on the instructor's superior knowledge.

Liability insurance is relatively cheap, and provides a valuable function to society for this sort of situation where someone suffers life changing injuries. It is also a useful driver to improve standards in workplaces (and this was a work related accident): businesses and industries that have poor safety records and rubbish claims experience, rapidly find that they have to implement systems and procedures to improve their performance, either at the specific insistance of their insurers, or because they are facing rising premiums and know they must improve their claims experience to prevent excessive insurance price rises.

Suggesting that the rider in this case should just suck it up is crass. Hopefully, this case will instead be something that helps to drive improvement in safety standards and the quality of tuition in the UK MTB skills instruction sector.

[i]FTFY[/i]

I know I know. In my defence I did mention that the whole thing had made me angry.

Bloke sounds like a total prat to me.

The bloke's in a wheelchair.

again as I said.

I have a life insurance and critical illness cover policy. If I contract a life limiting condition my insurer pays out to cover my mortgage, loss of earnings, house conversion costs and so on.

If I had to claim on that due to someone else's negligent action, is it unreasonable my insurer would look to his insurer to cover the payout instead?

It might be a recovery by some sort of other insurance - medical or maybe even a household insurer - but I just doubt it in this case.

My guess is that as a lawyer he would have the expertise/friends to bring the case and would have been well aware that the instructor had insurance hence the £4m claim.

The bomb hole at the start of BKB certainly has been steep enough in the past with a "round out" at the bottom that if you hit it at and speed (or yanked on the front brake?) and went otb it could end badly.

Horrible the lot of it. Cant get angry with the paralysed bloke though.

2) that he encouraged him to ride it a second time at speed. More dubious this one. going faster is often safer and not braking on the downslope of a bombhole is the right thing to do usually. this one is more arguable.

This seems a strange decision, I agree wholeheartedly. It would be simplicity itself for the defence to have a stream of the most qualified and experienced in the sport to make this case beyond reason.

This is totally true, this is why people go to instructors, to learn things like this. I suggest they appeal this as this part of the ruling is just wrong.

Have to say a few of the comments on here remind me of the reaction to the Article 50 judgement from people who don't understand what's going on and thought the courts were "trying to overturn the result" etc. I think it's important if you feel strongly about it to read the court report and make an effort to understand the basis on which the instructor was found to be liable and why that doesn't mean that people won't be able to instruct other people in activities carrying inherent risks in the future. It's not helpful to rage against the system, the court or indeed the claimant just because you don't agree with the end result.

Is there a link to the court report?
My question is whether they're making a judgement on something they actually understand or not.

There ses to be a lot of decisions made that affect mountain biking made by people who have no understanding of it.

I could get some liability insurance tomorrow and go out and charge people £80 a pop to teach them to ride. I would have no idea what I'm doing. This isn't a war on riding, it's a highly specific judgement on one person's lack of care for a beginner who was relying on (and paying for) his expertise. It will hopefully help make MTB courses safer in the future and that's a good thing for everybody involved in the industry.

I could get some liability insurance tomorrow and go out and charge people £80 a pop to teach them to ride. I would have no idea what I'm doing.

Could you? I would have thought the cover was conditional on having the right qualifications...

instructor but had “a tendency to be over-optimistic” about the ability of some of those he taught, and that he had not sought to assess the skill levels of members of the group beforehand.

I wonder what came out that enabled "tendency" to be used?

So according to the court, a more "skilled" instructor would prevent someone falling off their bike.

er, i think you'll find Gravity will have something to say about that........

I think you will find that a skilled teacher can actually teach you to ride things rather than just let you crash repeatedly due to gravity

We crash because we have a skill confidence interface- in this case one encouraged/80% caused by a "overzealous" instructor - not because gravity exists.

I could get some liability insurance tomorrow and go out and charge people £80 a pop to teach them to ride.

Unless you have a qualification or can otherwise evidence your competence, I doubt this very much.

As well as the potential for premiums across the market, I suspect that what instructors / coaches might see is more demands from insurers to demonstrate competence (either via a piece of paper, or other evidence), safe systems of work (e.g. robust assessment of student abilities) etc. None of which is a bad thing (apart from the premiums bit).

Where you might see a change in activity levels is the less "instructed" scenarios where someone is leading a ride, but not instructing or coaching - I'm thinking of things like shop rides where the business's insurer might well already stipulate that their public liability doesn't cover, and the shop is relying on a "at your own risk" disclaimer - the thought of a £3M liability might change the attitude to risk and some may well conclude that it's not worth it.

I've always thought that such activities look like quite a risk - as others have said disclaimers won't absolve culpability for negligence and if a business publicises a ride as "official" there could be a strong case for there being a duty of care towards participants which, if I was an LBS owner, I wouldn't want to be tested in the high court.

It may end reasonable priced instruction. Insurance is almost always available if you pay the set premium. It may be that the premiums are so high or the level of excess so high that none of us want to pay the price of instruction to cover this. Signing forms saying you accept its a dangerous sport etc I do not think are relevant to negligence. Its a sad case on both sides. I hope the instructor's insurance covers all the loss.

Onzadog - Member

Is there a link to the court report?
My question is whether they're making a judgement on something they actually understand or not

I assume they'll have called 'expert witnesses' (IANAL maybe not right phrase') to provide context/explanation etc. I know a guy that was called to provide independant assesmsent and explanation for a case he had nothing to do with in a different minority sport accident that went to court.

Is there a link to the court report?
My question is whether they're making a judgement on something they actually understand or not

This is unclear, not enough details on evidence presented and witnesses called.

So not really possible to say if it's a fair judgement or not.

What evidence was there to support the implication that the instructor was careless?

Could well get overturned on appeal if it's not robust.

[i]I think you will find that a skilled teacher can actually teach you to ride things [/i]

I thought he hit "a clumpy, grassy piece of ground". Taught? To ride that?
Yeah, drop-offs, jumps, wood bridges... but bits of grass, just shows it was a freak accident.

Cha****ng - that he did not find out beforehand the level of skill of the trainees was one, the other ( more dubious IMO) that he encouraged the trainee to ride a section he had crashed on but faster this time

[i]to ride a section he had crashed on[/i]

Did he crash the first time? I thought he just went the wrong way.

that he did not find out beforehand the level of skill of the trainees was one

And this is the only bit in the report that's a definite black mark.

No problem with the ruling myself if the instructor was negligent - I'm sure it happens - but I'd like to see the full evidence that was put to the court.

that he did not find out beforehand the level of skill of the trainees was one

I posted something on the original road.cc article about this - the rider described himself as "an experienced cyclist, but a novice on rough terrain and descents".

Experience is an extremely subjective thing to assess. I'm an "experienced" MTBer in as much as I used to race XC at a reaosnably high level, done numerous 24hr events etc but if you put me on some narrow North Shore 6ft up in the trees, I'd cry.

Years ago we had a rider turn up to our club MTB ride having told us by email that she was an "experienced cyclist"; it very quickly became apparent that she was incapable of riding on anything other than flat gravel tracks and on closer questioning, she admitted that she had only ever ridden bikes at the gym - but she thought that 3x a week on a static bike meant she was "experienced".

Problem is that on the forms that you fill in pre-coaching, you have to state your level of experience and most people (especially men) usually overestimate it which may give the instructor a false impression of ability.
The coaching course I did, they got people riding round a small fixed loop including a short descent, short climb, couple of corners etc while the Chief Instructor and his Assistants watched us and made notes, then made the assessment of the tuition that we needed in conjunction with the info we'd filled in on our forms.

(no idea if that happened in this case, was more arguing the "experience" side of things. Inexperienced people are often too inexperienced to actually know that they're crap!

From the original article - "a mountain biker of 12 years' experience"

+"A novice rider"

+"He had been riding a mountain bike for several years"

But, some really relevant* mentions of: "Mr Ahmed "educated and articulate" and "not a thrill seeker". Before the accident he went to the gym three or four times a week and played cricket on a Sunday."

*sarcasm

You can't find out a riders skill level beforehand. You can ask, but you can't tell what they're capable of until you've seen them on a bike.

The coaching course I did, they got people riding round a small fixed loop including a short descent, short climb, couple of corners etc while the Chief Instructor and his Assistants watched us and made notes, then made the assessment of the tuition that we needed in conjunction with the info we'd filled in on our forms.

thats the key bit - do this or an equivalent you will be fine.

Also, if this instructor was at fault due to slap-dash instructing, a gung-ho nature etc, why has he only had one person injured on his lessons?

Also, if this instructor was at fault due to slap-dash instructing, a gung-ho nature etc, why has he only had one person injured on his lessons?

Luck?

[i]Luck?[/i]

Exactly! (the bad kind)

I think you will find that a skilled teacher can actually teach you to ride things

I thought he hit "a clumpy, grassy piece of ground". Taught? To ride that?
Yeah, drop-offs, jumps, wood bridges... but bits of grass, just shows it was a freak accident.

why has he only had one person injured on his lessons?

Some pretty nasty stuff being said on Facebook. We don't know the full case representations only a few one lines put out by journalists. Unless we know how can we really form an opinion? Or do we always fill voids with opinions?

Unless we know how can we really form an opinion? Or do we always fill voids with opinions?

This is STW, we don't need those pesky facts to get in the way of an opinion!