The Accident at the 2008 British Treffen

A very serious accident occurred at the 2008 British Treffen.  The pillion passenger who was seriously injured is making progress and hopes to be well enough to make an Elite Wings social event in January but she suffered multiple injuries, had multiple operations and she has yet to recover her mobility.  The other injuries were relatively minor and the people involved have been back at work for some time; the bikes repairs are also now more or less complete.

But the insurers have by no means finished their work and the legal claims which are inevitable with this type of accident are only just beginning to get going.

This accident is likely to prove to be extremely costly, perhaps the most costly ever in UK GoldWing history.  It could turn out to have implications for motorcycle insurance premiums for all GoldWings.  Likewise for the way group riding needs to be organised (and insured) in future. There are lessons to be learned for anyone who organises or leads a GoldWing event or group ride, even a small one.
A large scale group ride was taking place in South Yorkshire in August 2008 as part of the British Treffen; it was organised and marshalled by the GoldWing Owners Club of Great Britain (GWOCGB) and over 200 bikes were involved.   Two Marshalls were overtaking the ride; one of them struck the rear of the other and then collided with another bike, which then collided with another.  Police investigated the accident and are reported to have decided not to prosecute anyone.

The insurers have also investigated the accident and they will have formed a view about which rider or riders were responsible for the accident because that has implications for who will end up paying.  If there is no agreement among the insurers it may take a Court case to decide where the liability lies.  Since this was an organised group ride, the organisers of the ride, GWOCGB, may also be considered to have some liability – for example if they are considered to have been negligent in the way the ride or the marshalling was planned or managed.  It could be several years before all the claims are finally settled.

For purposes of this Article it doesn’t matter who will eventually be held liable for this particular accident.  I mention it purely to illustrate that although accidents at organised biking events are not common, they can occur.  When GoldWings are involved the damage will rarely be cheap to fix; when serious personal injuries occur the cost will inevitably be high.

The important point is that these days insurance companies will automatically try to recover their costs if they can, so if there is a third party, such as an event organiser, to whom they can try to attach liability they will do so.  So the motorcycle insurers may well look to GWOCGB to recover the costs of this accident if they think that the Club has a duty of care and were negligent.  Nor incidentally will the riders involved have any control over this process; short of abandoning their own claim (and therefore paying any damages awarded against them as well for their own repairs) they will be obliged under the terms of their own insurance to allow their insurer to call the shots.

Indeed a request for details of GWOCGB’s insurance cover was made by the motorcycle insurance Broker almost immediately after this accident.  Strangely, and apparently after taking legal advice, GWOCGB refused to disclose its insurance details to the Broker.  GWOCGB’s PLI policy will inevitably require, as every insurance does, that they tell their own insurer what’s happening the minute there is any hint of a possible claim, so why it might be in the Club’s interests to refuse this information I find difficult to imagine.

It could be years before the claims stemming from this accident are all settled and information about who was held liable may never become public knowledge, nor should it be disclosed purely to satisfy idle curiosity.  But almost certainly some very important lessons are to be learned for the organising of group rides from this Accident. The sooner the information about these lessons can be released for the benefit of organisers of other large ride outs the better. Ideally of course GWOCGB would share the lessons learned with all Wingers and maybe even all bikers.

As it happens I looked into the subject of safety planning and PLI (i.e. organisers’ cover) when I was organising the 2008 Blackpool Light Parade, so I can pass on a bit of knowledge and experience, although I wouldn’t claim to be expert on the subject.

Planning for Safety

The Blackpool Light Parade is also a marshalled group ride which also involves well over 200 GoldWings and what’s more it takes place through crowded streets in the dark amid lots of distracting noise and lights.  We therefore took safety planning and getting adequate insurance cover very seriously indeed.

And these days safety planning and PLI cover are not just for big events.  There can be little doubt that anyone who organises any sort of activity or event involving motorcycles puts themselves at potential risk of a claim for damages if something goes wrong – and in these days of the so-called Compensation Culture in our Society, maybe even if something doesn’t go wrong!

But the risks of being an organiser of a biking event can easily be over-stated, and don’t want to do that. Planning a safe way to organise your ride out or parade involves pausing for thought and applying common sense rather than rocket science.  And if we’re talking about a small scale ride out such as a local GoldWing Club might organise, then there’s no need for a written risk assessment anyway – you just need to have thought about the safety of the group and whether anything special needs doing to protect it.

For example when I am leading a ride out I will almost always hold a riders briefing before we set off.  Nothing over-elaborate, nothing bossy, just a mention of the route, the sort of speed I will be riding at, the type of drop of system we will be using, who will be tail end Charlie, where the coffee stops might be, that sort of thing.  But these days I would also add a reminder that riders are responsible for their own safety at all times, so don’t blindly follow the guy in front, don’t force your pace above your own ability and comfort zone just to keep up, that sort of thing.

A lot of this stuff is often covered in your local Club’s riding guidelines, for example on the website – but remember that new members and computer fossils won’t necessarily know about those.  The important thing is not to ignore your responsibilities as an organiser or ride leader all together and trust to luck – that would be unwise.

Larger Scale Rides and Events

For large scale rides and parades you move into a different ball park and you need to get more professional, or at least more thoughtful and thorough, in your planning and management.  You should certainly consider getting PLI cover and if you do, you should make sure that you comply with any notification or other requirements the insurers may have.

This was where we got into a real zone of uncertainty when planning the 2008 Light Parade.  GWOCGB gets its PLI cover from BMF affiliation (which merely requires notification of an event) but GWOCGB interposes a “Recognition” requirement, and makes its own interpretation of the scope of the cover – and told us that our Parade would not be covered, because the bike will be moving, nor would the Best Lit Bike Competition, because “the keys will be in the ignition”.   When we got it from the horse’s mouth (or rather from a very helpful lady at BMF who clearly knew her stuff) this was not the case; all our planned activities were covered and we didn’t even need to notify what we were up to in writing or in detail, it was enough that I had rung her up and explained it.

For the Blackpool Light Parade we did a great deal of safety planning, involving consultation with the Council’s Health & Safety Department and the Police.  We did a careful risk assessment, which we wrote down.  We also wrote an Event Plan and submitted to the Council and Police for approval.  We also produced written safety instructions for participants and marshals which we handed out (or tried to) and published on our website.  It was quite an elaborate effort.

And despite all these efforts we did have an accident.  In the Riding Arena, during the first Drill Team Display, one of the riders got to close to the barriers. Fortunately there was only a little damage to the barriers which we could easily fix, and one minor injury, which the First Aiders we had laid on were able to attend quickly.  We were also able to revise the safety plans for the Arena quickly by adding an extra inner barrier using traffic cones. So the planning work paid off and we were able to keep the show on the road. If there had been a more serious injury and a claim, we could have shown that we had planned thoroughly, the plans had been approved and the Arena had been inspected by the Council’s Health & Safety guy – and we could have argued that it was not reasonably foreseeable that a Floridian Harley Rider, overwhelmed by the joy of riding a GL1800 for the first time, would have such a magnetic attraction for a row of wheelchair users on the other side of a steel barrier that he would feel compelled to attack them!

Insurance Cover for Event Participants

As a Participant in a group ride, taking normal due care with your riding (and also when you park up your bike) is all you need to worry about – almost.  Your motorcycle insurance policy is required by law to cover you against third party liabilities in connection with your use of the bike anywhere in UK.  So even if you ride your Wing up what is supposed to be a footpath to the top of Ben Nevis, then park it carelessly so that it falls over and hurts someone,  as far as that person’s injuries are concerned you are covered.

However motor insurers are increasingly interested in escaping claim liability whenever they can, so your comprehensive cover (which is unlikely to be all-embracing, whatever name they give it) may exclude off road riding or parking – and might even exclude riding on the road if that road has been officially closed for a Parade; you need to check your particular policy to establish that.  As far as I could establish, everyone who rode in the 2008 Blackpool Light Parade, when the Promenade roadway was officially closed for the duration, did not compromise their comprehensive cover – but I did invite them all to check their policy’s small print if they wanted to be sure.

No need to get paranoid about this; normal comprehensive motorcycle insurance probably does cover group riding for participants, including riding in Parades.

Risks for Organisers and Leaders

But the minute you act as organiser or leader of a group ride, another dimension of risk comes into potential play.

Organisers and leaders of rides may be deemed to have a “duty of care”, both to those motorcyclists who join the ride and to all who might be at risk because it is taking place – such as, in the case of the Blackpool Light Parade, pedestrian spectators.

This doesn’t mean you would be completely liable for any and everything that could possibly go wrong, it means that a Court might hold you liable, if you did have a duty of care and you failed to anticipate and prevent something that was reasonably foreseeable.

A duty of care does always arise either and it isn’t automatically all-embracing; it depends on the nature of the shared activity and all sorts of other factors – the law is quite complicated.  It certainly doesn’t mean that every organiser of every biking activity or event automatically takes on unlimited liability for everything that goes wrong.  Nor does it mean that you need to consult a lawyer before you let yourself get talked into doing something for your club or your mates. But it does mean that you could be held to have some responsibility, so when you take on the role of organiser or leader of a biking activity, you should at least give some thought to the safety of what you are doing.

For example if you are organising a public display of bikes to take place on sloping or uneven ground, it might be regarded as foreseeable that special steps would have to be taken to prevent the bikes falling over on spectators – maybe the same need for thought applies on level, firm ground too.  Just leaving it to the participants to park their bikes up any old way might not be good enough; you might be expected to have thought of parking all the bikes facing a particular way, or roping off the displayed bikes to discourage children from climbing on them, and so on.  There are no hard and fast rules; the requirement for safety precautions will depend on the circumstances. What is clear cut is that you should think about safety – and if something needs doing to control risk, you should do it.

If a bike did fall over on to a child and caused serious injury (perhaps leaving the child dependent on care for life) the damages might be huge.  Although the child’s parents would probably sue the owner of the bike in the first instance, the bike owner’s insurer might then seek to hold the organiser responsible, to recover their costs.   The parents might be advised to sue the organiser directly instead.  It is even conceivable that the bike owner’s insurer would seek to recover the costs of repairs to the bike from the organiser.

But I was organising it for the Club!

Even if you are organising something for your bike club you do not escape potential personal liability for negligence.   We’ve all got houses and other valuable assets, not to mention our bikes, and personal injury lawyers have no scruples about going after anyone who has assets if a claim against them is potentially viable.  The fact that you were organising an event for your club wouldn’t necessarily protect your personal assets even if your club is structured to have limited liability, like GWOCGB.

Having robust PLI cover for all your club’s activities and events is the best way of protecting the organiser’s personal assets as well as those of the club.

PLI Cover is not expensive

The good news is that PLI cover for group rides and biking events like rallies and even parades is not difficult to arrange and nor is it expensive – less than £3 per member per year.

It can be difficult and expensive to arrange cover for a one-off event but fortunately for bikers the British Motorcycle Federation has a block policy.  You acquire cover for all your club’s activities and events (within certain limits) simply by affiliating your Club to BMF.

When we abandoned GWOCGB Recognition (the Committee’s requirement for allowing us to benefit from the Club’s PLI cover) and therefore had to find our own PLI cover for the Blackpool Light Parade we ended up affiliating Lancs & Lakes (as an independent Club) with BMF.  We therefore ended up, in effect, paying twice for the same thing but at least by affiliating with BMF separately we were in direct contact with the source of the insurance and we got prompt and unambiguous answers to our questions.

Yes, a parade such as ours was included in standard cover.  No, there was no exclusion (or even any special significance) to the fact that the bike’s keys were in the ignition and the bikes were moving, as we had been told by GWOCGB.  How on earth the Scarborough Light Parade was conducted with reliable PLI cover for its organisers (as a GWOCGB Recognised Event) I cannot imagine.

So the plan for the new, independent Club which I will be joining when it forms next month will be to ensure that we have reliable PLI cover for all our activities, not just those for which GWOCGB chooses to grant it.  We hope to do this cooperatively with other independent clubs through the Federation of United Kingdom GoldWing Clubs (FUKGWC) which will also be forming soon.  Doing it this way will hopefully make it easier and slightly cheaper.  If that doesn’t work out them we will affiliate directly with BMF as an independent Club, just like we did for Lancs & Lakes last year.

In summary:

• Take safety seriously, as hopefully you do when you ride your own bike, but don’t get paranoid about being sued and decide never to volunteer to organise a display or lead a group ride ever again.
• A duty of care may not be avoidable but negligence is.  You are not required to prevent every conceivable accident, just those which are reasonably foreseeable. So if you pause for thought, take reasonable stock of what could go wrong and make a reasonable effort to prevent those things happening, you should escape being regarded as negligent.
• It is possible for your local club to take out PLI cover relatively cheaply and easily, without having to rely on people who make a black art of it and may not understand what they are doing themselves.