Does "Barry Knows Best?"

Is this one of those times where he has talked up his experience at the training session. (Yeah, I’ve been riding years).
And is now talking it back down when reality has bitten. (I’ve had a bike in the garage for years, I ride tow paths.)

I’ve seen it before.

we have a somewhat skewed idea of what “mountain biking” is on here compared to what most people see it as who claim to do it.

This. You’d be amazed at the number of folk who think they need a mountain bike to cycle along the canal in Inverness.

“Experienced” and “Novice” are totally contradictory in any statement, how intelligent was the rest of this guys statement of the facts?

I’m an experienced unicyclist, but a novice at riding backwards.

Bearing in mind this chap is a barrister, and he’s employing another barrister to make his case there’s just a chance they know more about making statements in a legal case than most people on here.

This. You’d be amazed at the number of folk who think they need a mountain bike to cycle along the canal in Inverness.

Absolutely. I have colleagues with mountain bikes who bought them to ride the piste cyclables that are all over the country. They’re tarmacced(?) and are generally in a condition that most people would be happy with on roads in the UK. When you try to explain that they’d be better off even with a hybrid they look at you like you’re mad. Road bikes are for roads, mountain bikes are for paths in the forest, paved or not apparently.

PS. It’s not a trial, it’s a civil case.

Civil cases have trials as well. The trial is the bit at the end of the procedure when a judge actually does the deciding and happens in a proper courtroom with fancy clothes and everything. The case is the whole process leading up to that including exchanging of statements and documents etc.

As others have mentioned, it is unlikely that this claim would have been initiated by the injured party (his profession is incidental), it will have been one or if like myself, a group claim by his personal insurers – in my case I have medical, professional, life (with critical care), travel and mortgage insurance policies which all provide elements of cover for life changing injuries, even if they are incurred during leisure time.
Like all financial institutions they will look to make sure someone else pays and if they believe the liability lies with someone else with the means to pay the bill, they will take action to get them to do so. In turn, the instructors liability insurance provider will robustly protect their profit margin. The chances are this will have been sat in negotiation for a number of years with no movement which is why it has ended up in adjudication (in this case all the way into court) because both sides have compelling arguments (if it was clear cut it would have settled years ago)

If it is a case of insurer prompting the legal action, we should be encouraged that they have not targeted the landowner.

It’s up to the judge to decide whether the skills instructor was negligent, but if he didn’t do anything irresponsible then I’d expect the decision to be that it was a freak accident and there’s no case to answer.

The thing is, the rider knew what was coming as he’d ridden it before. It’s his brain that tells him whether to do it or not and the instructor didn’t force him to do it.

I feel bad for both of them and this must have really played on the instructors mind. It’s really unfortunate and mtbing isn’t exactly ‘safe’.

If insurance wasn’t involved then I think it would be a case of MTFU you stacked it. However if he’d been told to ride the drop blind with something like “there’s a drop 100 yards down the trail just go fast and it’ll be ok” then that would clearly not be acceptable and reason to blame the instructor. That wasn’t the case from what I read.

I met a bloke recently who rides yoghurt pots in about 1:30 😉 he’s encouraged me to ride it faster. Is he liable if I screw it up now??

(p.s. This is not a serious post tbc)

lol just don’t brake you’ll go faster!

Could always do what Hora does, and walk down it? 😉

@teamhurtmore I signed up for a jumps and drops skills course yesterday, think I might get insurance now! It’s on the 27th of November near Bristol.

Jumps & Drops Public Full Day

I can’t break at the moment acid – no pads left. Realised last night over on Gibbet Hill. made me ride a lot faster!!!

Went to LBS earlier and embarrassed myself further by explaining that front shifter was a bit dodgy. Turns out it was broken in recent crash. 😳 fair to say that I am a total numpty when it comes to anything mildly technical with a bike!!!

Do we all have some sort of personal accident insurance we could claim against for a similar injury (assuming no one else at fault)?

Bigjim get a grip. How is it trying to ruin anyone?

I’m honoured to receive the attention from the stw morals big hitters. The guy says he’s been thinking about it for years and now he’s having to stand up in court to defend himself against these accusations against him and his business because someone else fell off their push bike and got unlucky and wants lots of money because of it. I doubt he’s going to get a reasonable insurance quote again as well as having his reputation trawled through the mud. I hope he’s able to keep on as an instructor, though why anyone would want to when you risk this nonsense I’m not sure.

medical, professional, life (with critical care), travel and mortgage insurance policies which all provide elements of cover for life changing injuries,

Life insurance policies (and Personal Accident) cannot recover amounts paid under the rule of subrogation. It’s possible that other elements of his losses have been paid under indemnity contracts and the insurers are trying to recover the monies, but I suspect it’s his outlay he’s trying to recover (based on gut feel and the awful reporting).

It’s not arbitration either – this is a court hearing and arbitration is ADR.

BTW for any people offering services out there, your standard 1-2 million policies are probably not enough these days. Even 10m possibly won’t cover it. Many councils are at 25-30m limits on employers’ liability now to give you a idea of how much claims are expected to be at the top end (see Agnes Collier for an extreme idea).

I’ve seen hillier snooker tables

65m of drop – not huge but it’s definitely a hill. You’re Northern, aren’t you?

Anyway – wondering about the implications of the fact that the instructor has not made the trails, and is not therefore responsible for them.

If you are an outdoor centre and you make a shoddy high ropes course that fails, that’s your fault. If you are a climbing instructor and a big piece of rock falls off – that’s really not, is it?

So this is somewhere in between I think.

He did the run more than once, this would mean to me he could judge what was appropriate himself.

He is after all well educated.

If it was a blind run and he felt pressured into it, and it was not appropriate for his skill base that’s another matter.

Jedi didn’t tell me to do anything…he just used some freaky mind trick.

get a grip. How is it trying to ruin anyone? Insurance is held for a reason. Stop looking at job titles and reading alot more into a media report with limited information.

This… Anyone who ever sees anything they know about reported knows Journalists always get it wrong, and yet we believe them about other stuff. Why?

Yes – I have broken my pelvis in a Bomb hole in Friston, and my son broke his wrist on BKB – and we wouldn’t have dreamed of sueing any one. Even if it had been under instruction. But we can still walk.

In the end this ain’t personal or punitive, it is the way our insurance and legal system works to try and help people with genuine and expensive disabilities. IANAL but sometimes it is too easy to make Lawyer jokes.

Am I right that this has taken 4 years to get to this point i.e. to court?

The beginners skills course, costing £79, was designed to help riders tackle more “technically demanding terrain in a safe and controlled manner”.

the QC told the court: “A mountain bike rider who is on a course for beginners and is a novice should not be catastrophically injured in the first 75 minutes of an introductory training course.
“A novice rider on a first training course should expect the instructor to pick the terrain, to pick the course, to pick the method of training so the risk is minimised, so this accident should not have occurred.
“The accident occurred because of defective instruction and defective teaching.”

To me, what’s shite is the QC using bullshit to try to win the case instead of straight facts. The rider wanted to tackle “technically demanding terrain” and you can’t do that without riding some. And it’s not like a cycling instructor can take you down riding backwards like a ski instructor would.

As has previously been mentioned – no winners here.

I like to think that I wouldn’t sue an instructor if something like this happened to me – but to be honest, I can see how my life view might change if I were confined to a wheelchair. I don’t know for sure, of course.

The fact that he could be obliged to do this by his insurance company is also worth considering.

The other smaller elephant in the room is the nature of the built trail that the accident happened on – on second thoughts, probably best to leave that line of thought in the box……………

I reckon the injured lads insurers and lawyers would have worked out who to sue, the landowner or the instructor. My guess is the instructor is an easier target as he may have less resources to manage the case against him and was urging the injured lad to give it a go. The landowner might have far greater resources to defend this. Its one of those horrible things where the pawns are people and the outcome is an insurance payout behind closed doors.

Anyone have any pics or video of the bomb hole pre-softening?

Was this it?

18 and or 39 seconds…

…42 seconds?

Edited as original still is wrong I think

Obviously we’re just getting it through the lens of the press but the way the case is being pursued seems to be outright dishonest- the experienced novice, the “ride technically demanding terrain” course that shouldn’t have included technically demanding terrain”… etc. It’s like a STW thread.

Looking at the videos it looks like pretty flat single track, if you fall off on that then you can only really blame yourself, im sure most of us have had stupid accidents where we’ve done the wrong thing, I certainly have, be it carrying too much speed into a corner or not concentrating and take a stupid line.. im not sure how an instructor can prevent a pupil doing something daft.

Of course – which is why it’s in court because it’s not clear one way or the other. If it was as clear cut that the instructor wasn’t negligent as some seem to think then it wouldn’t have got this far.

I thought I’d covered the experienced / novice thing up there. Clearly Sir Brad was an experienced cyclist but novice cyclo cross rider in 2002 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt5h-rnsF6I

Clearly a novice at riding technically demanding terrain needs something to push them, but you don’t send them straight down a black run – I suspect any confusion there is due to poor reporting.

The instructor from what I understand might be insured through a cycling organization.
The drop has completely flattened out out the last 12 years.
The guy had already fallen off the bike once on that part of the trail and he still took the same line.

aracer – Member

I thought I’d covered the experienced / novice thing up there. Clearly Sir Brad was an experienced cyclist but novice cyclo cross rider in 2002

Not the same at all, the claim is that he was an “experienced mountain biker” and also “a novice rider”. They’re simple contradictions.

I also covered that one earlier – experienced mountain biker might mean on gravel fireroads and probably does to most people, the novice claim is in relation to “rough terrain” and “descents”.

I thought I’d covered the experienced / novice thing up there. Clearly Sir Brad was an experienced cyclist but novice cyclo cross rider in 2002

Shall we all bow to your expertise in this manner or are you going to accept some of us maybe correct? If not, you might as well have this thread to yourself.

Let’s hope there’s some reporting of the case as it progresses, to save us this pointless bickering.

I also covered that one earlier – experienced mountain biker might mean on gravel fireroads and probably does to most people, the novice claim is in relation to “rough terrain” and “descents”.

No! That would be “experienced” in riding on fire roads and tracks. Experienced mountainbiker would mean something along the lines of having ridden regularly in all types of MTB terrain and is skilled in the necessary techniques.

According to this forum maybe, but we already covered that one too…

Buckster – You’re right on the second one. It’s flattened out by the camera but it’s a steep-ish rooty roll in. Nothing to trouble someone experienced, nerve wracking for a newbie.

2 minutes! come on mods!

Any time you keep saying “I covered this earlier” but people don’t agree, I think you should consider that maybe you’ve not covered it in a way other people think is right. So just saying “I covered it” again doesn’t really achieve much unless you give it some thought.

So frinstance,

aracer – Member

I also covered that one earlier – experienced mountain biker might mean on gravel fireroads and probably does to most people, the novice claim is in relation to “rough terrain” and “descents”.

This is a massive leap of faith, especially as the solicitor says “”A mountain bike rider who is on a course for beginners and is a novice”- nothing specific to “rough terrain” or “descents”. Essentially you’ve decided what it must mean, without anything to support it.

Think you’re wasting your time Northwind 🙂