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Interesting!
I wonder if the Court will try to enforce that in Formula 1 and BTCC etc where there is often some expensive carnage. I could imagine that some of the more ‘accident prone’ drivers might be refused cover by a ‘normal’ insurance company. The teams would have to self-insure and settle claims between themselves, and cut out the rip-off insurance industry middlemen.
The point is Richard, and many people have misunderstood this, is that it is not specifically about motorsport but any vehicle that is mechanically powered, from your sit on lawn mower to fairground rides.
The where’s and why for’s of the European Union are not the point here, but there is a real genuine risk that there could be a Europe wide law mandating compulsory Third Party and unlimited insurance on all motor vehicles no matter what their use or where they are used. It is not a case of not being enforceable but that no such insurance exists and were it to be available no one, not even F1 teams could afford it. This is not just about car damage but third party liability. So injury, consequential losses, lawyers the lot. So what happens when you hit the McLaren that is just about to score the first point of the season and does not get the prize money and the multi million dollar sponsorship deal because of it and so on. At a grass root level the premiums just for one race would be beyond the average yearly race budget. This insurance does not exist, therefore no one could have it. Racing therefore would be illegal and it is not like saying that you did not insure your lawn mower because you only use it in your enclosed back garden and no one knows.
Now there is plenty of industry response to this in motorsport and the the motorsport industry in Europe is worth many billions of Euro but the point is, this will not just disappear, some thing will come of this, the important bit in responding is to make it as benign as possible.
NASCAR et al have been insured for years (drivers are treated as contractors, and insure themselves)
I repeat, for those not grasping the implications of this, that this is about a potential Europe wide law, mandating compulsory third party, unlimited, so no cap on the size of claim, insurance on all motor vehicles regardless of where they are used. It is not about First Party insurance, insuring a vehicle for damage, or having limited public liability insurance.
As a motor vehicle every single race car within Europe would be required to have this as soon a a driver sits in to start the engine. In a race every car would be in the same conditions as on the public road. If you cause an accident or incident liability and costs will fall to the driver, or more the lawyers making the case. It has the potential to make any incident on track the same as on the road.
In an unfortunate incident at Donington last weekend, 7 MK1 race cars were written off, many others damaged. At an average cost of £10,000 per car to replace and then all the other costs which would arise and could be claimed I could easily see a total insurance bill being over £140,000 under this legislation for this one incident and that does not assume any personal injury claims. And if drivers thought they could get their next years racing funded by claiming, they would.
Crashes from a bump to a right off are no exactly uncommon in motorsport. At least one Alfa and two Fiesta’s suffered similar. So for an insurer to accept that sort of risk, that one driver could be liable for the whole field of thirty cars, that they do it three times per race meeting and 8 times a year and given that racing carries a pretty substantial risk that something is going to happen, how much to you think the premium would be? It is beyond affordability and MX-5 racing is at the bottom end in the cost of motorsport.
Such an insurance does not exist.
If you were an insurer, would you want to insure this grid for all third party liability? What would you want as a premium?
I think I heard that we were supposed to be leaving the EU.Do we have to comply with this nonsense?
Well currently we are still part of Europe and will be for longer than some think. Even if some how the UK escaped this and all European laws being written in to statute books. (I doubt this one would be a priority to change and it would be too late by then) But no Monaco GP, no Spa, Nurburg, Hungaroring, Monza, Baku, Jerez. No DMT, no World Touring Cars, no Formula E, no Super Bikes, no Irish road circuits, no ice racing, no lawn mover racing. No GP teams in the UK.
As I and many others have said in other places, rather than saying it is silly, add weight to the response. The deadline is Friday.
What he said 
But, motorsport is a huge industry effectively, just as much as say cinema, or football, or some other business that’s basically an entertainment and is not necessary to sustain life. So how can any legislature pass a ruling that effectively then by what appears to be accident wipe out an entire industry (at least in EU) and the many thousands who’s livelihoods depend on it?
I’m not saying you’re being over dramatic but it seems to be some common sense has to prevail at some point to save the entire european motorsport industry from extinction, which lets face it is unthinkable and is not going to happen.
ALthough of course if sense doesnt prevail we will all have to start watching Nascar and all those other wonderful US motorsports, I’m quite partial to a bit of monster truck racing…
There is in place a Motor Insurance Directive, this dates from before the proverbial Slovenian tractor case. EU Directives can be considered as guidance to EU members how to amend their laws in the context of the single market. For the EU5, it is often the case the existing laws more than meet the requirements of a Directive, and often only minor adjustments are needed. There is also no timetable for member states to implement Directives; famously, some Directives can take years before they reflect in Law. Acts are a different instrument, and are compulsory, and not open to member state interpretation as to what bits of Law need to change.
The Directive was intended to cover the provision of insurance on public roads. The Court ruled that the wording wasn’t sufficiently clear, and therefore the definition of what was a public road would change, to include airport concourses, golf courses, gardens, warehouses and, potentially, race tracks.The issue arose as a result of how the Directive was translated into Slovenian.
So what if this interpretation was enacted without change? Racing drivers become, in law, uninsured drivers. The MSA adjusts its rulebook to allow drivers with penalty points to keep their Race Licences. Members of the House are outraged. MSA mentions motorsports, jobs, and everyone shuts up.
What happens right now if you are hit by an uninsured driver? You are compensated through general compensation funds. At the moment, £30 is deducted from every premium for this fund. Currently, insured drivers cost us £2 billion a year, or about 10,000 Donington incidents (at a generous £200k to cover the half dozen already knackered 25 year old Mk1s that I saw).
The Motorsports Industry likes to think its the centre of the universe at times, during its regular blackmail of government (much like other trade bodies, it seems, such as EDMA, which represents European medical device manufacturers, who argued that the lax European approach to devices meant Europeans could access nifty devices 7 years ahead of the suffering Americans who have to put up with pesky clinical trials. Oh, and Czech-approved Chinese hip joints that snapped were an aberration…).
Implementation of the ruling means our car insurance will go up, not so much to compensate F1 teams, but to sort out old biddies who crash their buggies at the shopping centre… The result will be not so much the motorsports industry calling it a day because it can’t afford the insurance, but it calling it a day because of lack of fans, as we all become hacked off with drivers crashing their cars at our expense…
The line that motorsports is uninsurable is nonsense (the MIA doesn’t really offer evidence for this, only that someone told them it was uninsurable, and we should all take them at their word). Anything is insurable. Commercial airliners flying cheap flights through a Ukrainian warzone and (allegedly) being taken out by a Russian missile are insured. Shipping creeping around the Horn of Africa with a cargo full of B&Q Chinese garden furniture, and with a full detachment of mercs are insured. Squaddies deploying to frontlines buy life insurance to top up the compo should they fail to return. The Motorsports bodies and manufacturers are wealthy enough. UK Motorsport alone is worth 310 billion a year. Broadcasting, ticketing alone is worth £4bn globally, and half of that is returned to Europe. There are a lot of greenbacks (or whatever colour Euros are in) floating about, enough to sudsidise the amateur. These companies could, for instance, add to the uninsured drivers pot.For salaried drivers, teams will start tying into the driver contracts damage clauses, as is the practice in the US (you break it, you fix it out of your pocket). Drivers suddenly start adding Compare the Meerkat to their overalls as the Insurance Industry gets involved in racing, and is bedazzled by it all.
FISMA has already announced the change they want to make to the Directive. Consultations went around through member states to see if there was anything else. Its a simple change, but being the EU, it will take some time going around the houses, before it takes effect. Maybe in the meantime, there will be some chancer on the Grid who will try his luck next time he ends up in the Armco, and maybe he will get some money out of the pot. He’ll probably (hopefully) be blackballed by the racing fraternity, and never race again. These sort of things will happen until the EU Leviathan ceases.
It suits MIA and other to make a meal out of this. After all, their petitions etc merely remind any manufacturer who is not a member how important the MIA is in protecting their interests, and that they better pay up (similar tactics are employed on the other side of the employee-employer divide). Changes will be made, motorsports claims the glory.
Fundamentally this has arisen because Slovenia has been tardy in the 10 years it has been an EU member in implementing some EU Directives that we all take for granted (worker compensation, forcing the farm labourer to take his case to a non-Slovenian court). No one wrote the law to screw motorsports. The EU isn’t out to wreck the motorsports industry (though it doesn’t extend to it the favouritism demanded by the manufacturers (displayed by their arrogance in the failed experiment of transplanting the racing calendar to the Far East and various Central Asian dictatorships)). I’m not going to lose too much sleep over this. And I had an MSA licence.
Maybe so, but it seems obvious to me that our village playground was dismantled due to insurance concerns and our local town no longer has a firework display for the same reason. The real impact of this kind of legislation will be felt at the grass roots level. I understand that this club isn’t particularly motorsport focussed, neither am I EU bashing, but it seems to me a reasonably genuine threat that is worth responding to regardless of your opinion of the MIA or the EU.
I always find the logic of someone taking half an hour to tell someone their opinion of why they think something won’t happen rather than 10 minutes adding to the weight to help in not happen takes a certain type of special mentality.