That’s a good question.
Let’s suppose you trash something expensive when your kite line breaks on your 2007 Slingshot or you hit a child on the beach, leading to a serious condition.
You live at home with your mum and your biggest asset is your kite gear and maybe a boner of a car. You have no kitesurfing third party insurance.
Well, you would hardly be worth suing for the direct costs or for the care the child may need for the rest of their life. You’d probably be declared bankrupt and some lawyers may go after your mums’ assets, though that may be not much, if at all possible.
You probably weren’t negligent as it was kit failure and after months of anxious waiting the police may say it’s a civil matter, avoiding any criminal prosecution. Unlikely to be as black and white as this if you hurt someone.
Would a court make you pay from future earnings, you never know…..
Now, you may have a great story to tell down the pub about the ‘gin palace’ your wrecked and how they tried to sue you and the tosser didn’t deserve it anyway or you hit a child and may be you realize what you have done to another human being and not even able to help them in the future and become stricken with grief, affecting your life and maybe your family’s, perhaps to a serious degree, depending on your moral compass.
Another scenario is that you’ve worked for many years, had some success and are worth a bit, now is when the lawyers will get hungry and some third party kitesurf insurance my insulate you from losing some or all of your wealth.
Now, I’m no lawyer, but have been around a bit to have had enough to with them (mainly business, I might add, ahem!) So the scenarios may play out quite differently and will be very specific to the case, who knows what may happen. Every bit of legal advice seems to be different at the start of an event to that given at the end IMHO.
The chances of you doing something with your kite as above are very slim, I agree, but when it goes bad, it can go very bad. So for a few quid a year would you seriously risk it?
It won’t protect you from the effects of hurting another human, but it may help the mess you leave behind.
Some of the insurances have some good secondary benefits too.
For me it’s not just about protecting assets, it also about ‘doing the right thing’ to help reduce the impact of issues, should they occur.
A similar outlook to perhaps minimizing the risks in the first place – maybe those 12yr old lines and kite do need replacing……and kiting around kids isn’t so clever.
For many beaches it’s a personal choice to have TP insurance, but really why risk it for a few quid a year.
elguapo wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 8:52 pm
robclaisse wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 11:35 am
500K is nowhere near enough. Forget about fatality, if you take out some child swimming and cause a head injury which means they need some form of care for the rest of their life, 500K isn't gonna come anywhere close. I'd think 5 million minimum, though BKSA is 10 million.
I'd also double-check if you are getting your own insurance and are kite foiling, that the policy covers it explicitly. I know the BKSA have worked with there insurancers directly on this to ensure they are fully aware of the differences between kiteboarding/kitesurfing and kitefoiling. I actually created some videos the BKSA used to show the insurers exactly what kitefoiling is so the BKSA could ensure their insurance would definitely cover kite foilers if anything did happen. Just something to be aware of if you are getting your own insurance.
so...
this isnt a joke thread?
you really need insurance...to kitesurf?