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news
Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Man left paralysed by cycling accident sues mountain bike instructor for £4m
A man left paralysed after falling on his head during a mountain biking course in the Surrey Hills is suing the instructor for £4m in damages.
The Telegraph reports that Asif Ahmed landed on the front of his head, just above the forehead, after hitting "what looked like a clumpy, grassy piece of ground" during a £79 beginners’ skills course on Holmbury Hill in March 2012. He now faces the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Frank Burton QC, representing Ahmed, said the incident had occurred "during a descent described variously as a slope, gully, drop off or bombhole at part of the route known as Barry Knows Best".
Ahmed alleges that Leon MacLean used a “lazy form of teaching” and was guilty of “woefully inadequate” supervision.
MacLean denied he “progressed this group too fast” and said Ahmed twice went down the wrong part of the track.
Burton told the High Court that Ahmed was "not a thrill seeker". A regular gym-goer and cricketer before his accident, he was described as an experienced cyclist, but a novice on rough terrain and descents.
"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."
Ahmed believed he had been instructed 'to descend the gully at speed and without braking'.
MacLean, who is also a teacher, said that Ahmed rode down the “wrong part of the track” once and then repeated the error.
"I am 100 per cent sure he made the same mistake twice," he said. "I was surprised at the time. It has been on my mind for four-and-a-half years and I am absolutely positive it happened."
Tim Horlock QC said MacLean was “a careful and considerate instructor," adding: "He is the very opposite from the picture that is sought to be painted of a cavalier or gung-ho, authoritative or rushed, instructor."
Horlock said the group had not been rushed and that Ahmed had known he could have walked instead of ridden at any point. He also claimed that Ahmed's mountain biking experience 'was significantly greater than one might have been led to believe'.
"There was nothing unreasonable about permitting Mr Ahmed, a mountain biker of 12 years' experience, to have a run down the slope once, or more than once."
Mr Justice Baker reserved his judgment to a later date.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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29 comments
From Surly's post
"I hope he is successful and gets a lot of money. JESUS OF COURSE I DO, HE'S FUCKING PARALYSED."
From your own post.
"Best for everyone involved if he can get a payout from the insurance. He will need it. Not like insurers/reinsurers are hard up for cash. "
Maybe there's just a discrepancy between what you write, what you mean, and how I interpret what I read?
I've just watched the you tube video of the run and obviously the rider is hammering it to get a top Strava run but even then it doesn't look to difficult and if, as is quoted, it was a beginners class its not a bad little run.
I'm not going to comment on the ins and outs of the case because i dont know enough about it.
Mr Ahmed could be any one of us. Even those who have never crashed (so far). No one is unsympathetic to his current circumstances. In many other countries we may well be fund raising to pay for his treatment.
If there has been a basic failure in duty of care then compensation is due, but I would suggest that those saying insurance companies should simply pay up on the grounds of the level of injury are very misguided. Strip out the business aspect of paying wages, making profit and rewarding shareholders and insurance is at its heart a risk transfer mechanism. A small premium against a calculated risk of a claim. If the bar to claims is set too low then premiums rise. Not dificult. The problem to the rest of us comes when those who run training or who are responsible for the land which we use can no longer afford premiums and cannot take the risk of being sued for injury without insurance protection. The result is ultimately the loss of those facilities.
I don't remember anyone saying that. Can you quote?
Suggest you re-read your own posts above, also check out the post in response to mine by SurlyByName.
I did read my posts and Surly's again. I can't see it. If you've seen it, surely you can quote it?
On reading the comments here, I don't think anyone is being unsympathetic to Mr Ahmed and how tough it must be to go from being an active sporty type to partial paralysis. In the telegraph article it states he is still working so I don't think that he will necessarily be seen as destitute by the court. It will also be a mitigating factor in any calculation of damages as any amount claimed under loss if earnings will be reduced.
English courts have a long tradition of reluctance to find negligence in sports injury cases as the obvious outcome of a litigious approach to sports injury is to discourage participation. It will come down to whether the instructor fell short of "reasonable standards" of instruction and if there was an element of recklessness in his approach to instruction and decision making.
There is one key fact, that this terrible accident happened on Mr Ahmed's second attempt at Barry Knows Best. This will diminish his argument that he wasn't aware of the challenges of the trail and he could have decided not to ride it a second time.
I will be interested to see which way the decision goes and of course Mr Ahmed has my sympathy.
I wonder if learners can/should take out 'rider error' insurance, rather than hope to rely on the instructor's insurance? Would it cost a significant fraction of the £79 course fee?
Can't see it going that far. Both parties are encouraged to settle.
These instructors will be insured by a large firm or subsidary of a large firm posing as a specialist who don't hold capital for payouts from just instructors, which would be necessary for the theory that a large payout or payouts in an area affecting instructor premiums. You really need a pretty bad actuarial fuckup to affect insurance premiums as these firms reinsure part of their risk, which then gets traded obscurely. And even then, they'd rather take a hit than become uncompetitive against a rival insurer. They don't make their money just from retail insurance in any case.
Insurers love putting out press releases about how premiums are going up because of such and such a reason, but really premiums go up because of a whole lot of reasons, usually related to poor returns from their fixed income investments (which haven't been doing so well in recent years so yes premiums may be going up and they may put out a Daily Mail press release to tell us it's because of some group of claimants for us to hate on).
Even wide scale insurance fraud doesn't hurt them. They know what they're doing.
Hmmm. I mostly agree with surly_by_name - the guy is paralysed, he's (not unreasonably) making a claim on the instructor's liabiity insurance, for which it is useful to show that the instructor was liable through incompetence; the instructor is (not unreasonably) trying to show that his competence as an instructor was not contributory. The key thing that is unusual, and for which we should have a lot of sympathy, is that Asif Ahmed is paralysed...
Actually think it'll be an interesting case to follow when all the details emerge. Usually I'll go on instinct and form an early opinion, maybe change it later, but this case - really no idea which way it'll go as you'd need to know how fast the sessions are supposed to safely progress and how fast this fateful session did actually progress.
Like surly says, the guy's fucked. Best for everyone involved if he can get a payout from the insurance. He will need it. Not like insurers/reinsurers are hard up for cash. Instructor can get another job if he gets the sack even if he really didn't do much or even anything wrong.
Maybe settle out of court anyway and we'll never know what went on.
Errrrr ... this guy is paralysed. As in he won't walk again. Or piss or have a w*&k. This is not a non trivial event. He is - in the parlance - fucked. All the money in the world is not going to make up for this. Why are you all assuming that he's at fault/the instructor is an angel? And unless you are the paralympic cycling team in disguise then calling him a numpty is entirely out of order. HE'S PARALYSED FOR FUCK'S SAKE. That's even before you get to the fact that the instructor should have insurance that pays out in this circumstance (or he shouldn't be taking clients).
Also - Mungecrundle: gross negligence is a US standard that doesn't have a recognised meaning in English law (at least with regard to tort; there have been some cases in contract where the court has reluctantly accepted that idiots will use the expression in an attempt to look clever and forced themselves to deal with it, for example, Moore-Bick LJ in Tradigrain SA v Intertek Testing Systems (ITS) Canada Limited [2007] EWCA Civ 154, and J P Morgan Chase Bank v Springwell Navigation Corporation [2008] EWHC 1792). Returning to tort: duty of care, breach of that duty, loss occasioned by that breach. That's all you need. So the questions for the court are (1) did the instructor owe the plaintiff a duty of care (and if so what was the scope of that duty of care); (2) did the instructor breach the duty or care; and (3) did the plaintiff suffer loss as a consequence of the breach. (1) and (3) seem to be made out; (2) would appear to depend on the scope of the duty and the particular facts.
I hope he is successful and gets a lot of money. JESUS OF COURSE I DO, HE'S FUCKING PARALYSED.
Of course I feel sorry for the guy, but this is a ridiculous reason to root for an outcome. The money doesn't come from insurers pockets, they come from our pockets through the insurers. Insurance companies won't pay this from their profits but from future premiums.
Higher payouts mean higher premiums mean higher costs for instructors mean fewer kids paying for instruction. And a less skilled riding public out on the trails. If that's significantly better instruction, then I'm all for it. If that's just a levy being placed on instruction because of an unavoidable accident, that's not great public policy. Plus that would mean one good instructor potentially driven broke and out of a job through no real fault of his own.
So yeah, you can say that you root for the paralysed guy, because simples. But know that you could in reality be rooting for more untrained kids to get needlesly paralysed in the future.
You have the same bias as the rest of the posters who have it in for the guy who is now in a wheel chair - "unavoidable accident", "one good instructor", "no fault of his own". The whole point of the proceedings is to determine whether the instructor owed a duty of care and failed to perform in accordance with that duty of care. Or, put another way - whether in fact this accident was avoidable because unlike what everyone seems to think this guy wasn't a good instructor and the damage was, in fact, his fault.
And the stuff about untrained kids. There comes a point where taking something to its logical extension becomes parody. Under your alternative system your "good instructor" - who is consequently beyond reproach - paralyses a few of those kids with his negligence because he suffers no consequences.
No. That was written in the conditional tense. The "if" preface clues that in: "If that's just a levy..." But to elaborate, if the instructor was incompetent, then punishing him should serve as valuable incentive for better instruction. And therefore, "if [the end result] is significantly better instruction, then I'm all for it." But that has not been ascertained.
Again, I literally wrote: "If that's significantly better instruction, then I'm all for it."
Sure. But until more evidence surfaces, I can't see how you could think it so obvious to wish for any outcome. Both outcomes have potentially terrible consequences.
I agree, one payoff is not going to seriously hurt the insurer. But on a fairly niche segment, I do think one "large" payoff could have a non-trivial impact on the actuarial calculations.
But more than that my point the idea that one can should hope that the insurer pays off the injured party, solely because it has suffered the most and is most in need (insurers won't mind...) isn't sustainable. While seemingly well-intentioned, it can lead to terrible outcomes if adopted wholesale.
Also the high-level outcome from loads of these cases would be fewer opportunities - fewer instructors and insurers prepared to take the risk, fewer facilities to take risks in relative safety.
For an idea of what the trail is like, look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9quBi955xw
The common accident spot is the slight drop around 29 seconds in
I ride Barry Knows Best with my 11 year old boy most weekends and can guess where the accident happened as I have seen a few first timers come a cropper on the slight drop towards the beginning of the trail. If you don't get your weight back on the drop, you're probably going straight over the bars. If someone was a complete beginner, they could easily screw it up but something doesn't stack up with 12 years claimed experience and being in a beginner's course.
Personally I would not take a first timer down Barry's because of this drop. However if they told me they had 12 years experience and they looked like they could do the basics, then no problem.
As sad as it is, it's an accident and crashes/wipe outs do happen mountain biking and this one is very unfortunate.
Guess what? Cycling has its risks, you can get hurt. Mr Asif has every right to try (it on), but unless the instructor was grossly negligent he is not going to get very far with his claim.
Given the state of the law in this country, the court may find in favour of the numpty if the instructor failed to warn him that there's a risk of falling off.
From the Telegraph headline on the "related article that comes up under this one on Facebook, the plaintiff in this case is a solicitor. Read from that what you will.
Ahmed Asif is an adult and, had he felt uncomfortable at any time, could have used his own judgement about his own ability to make a decision to tell the instructor he was not comfortable and would call it a day.
I and I'm sure many others know the exact point where this fall happenned. To land in such a way would be extremely unlucky, and almost require the rider to have no natural self preservation reaction.
It is an intimidating approach to a not actually very technical section of a very tame descent. I can't see how someone who has ridden for as long as he has could possibly be allowed to abdigate responsibility for their own safety in this way, but lets face it we've seen some terrible court rulings in this respect.
I'm surprised that there's no mention of protective gear though... I would not instruct anyone on an MTB without properly fitting helmets and maybe some basic pads (dependent on terrain)
Looks like an unfortunate case of rider error.
As an aside I've ridden that route plenty of times, it's a well maintained fast and flowy track, the sort of thing that's still fun on a hardtail, you can hammer down and use the berms to slow you down, there are no drop-offs or bombholes that I recall (could have been remodelled/redirected since the accident of course)
How can someone mountain-bike for years and not encounter a downhill section or rough terrain?
Sounds to me like he is one of those typical students that tries to run before they can walk.
Quite easily - one of those people who's idea of "mountain biking" is the annual family holiday to CenterParcs.
Someone once came along on our club MTB ride who promised that she was a keen cyclist. Turned out that this meant she rode the exercise bike in the gym twice a week, as far as I could work out she'd never actually ridden a bike outside (at least not since she was about 7...) Fortunately we were able to re-jig the route to accommodate her complete lack of ability.
If you've spent 12 years riding around the New Forest for example... something like Barry Knows Best would appear to be as difficult as a black diamond run.
On the other hand is this simply the plaintiff's way of ensuring he is looked after for the rest of his life? - a national disability insurance scheme simialr to that in New Zealand would eliminate this court process and blame game altogether. I wonder what the other participants in the course have to say too.
Whilst I do agree with your point, I think you need to remember that for many people, "mountain biking" can cover a multitude of sins. For some people, it's being Danny Macaskill along the ridge at the top of a mountain; for others, it means a fast steep downhill like the original Marin County guys; but for others (for a lot of others), it just means they rode a mountain bike and it wasn't on tarmac.