I'll back up VMX42 on that one...
Having been an organiser of events in clubs for many, many years, I am very aware of the traps and pitfalls of the insurance/riding cost debate.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy to gloss over the realities of the legal system, when brainstorming on a forum such as this for ways to make event easy and cheap. The reality is somewhat different, especially when its your house on the line.
The bottom line is that in Australia, indemnity waivers have until recently, been considered by lawers to be not worth the paper they are written on and that has led to the need to have insurance. I say until recently, as the rising cost of said insurance has finally led the Governments to rewrite the laws somewhat for "high risk" activities so that the waivers
might actually mean something. The operative word here being "might", as I don't believe the new limitation laws have been tested in court yet. They could still be worthless for all we know.
So until it is widely accepted that waivers are absolute, i.e. enter at you own risk means just that, then insurance costs are here to stay, but the new waiver has reduced or capped those costs.
My 2c worth (we must be up to about $3.46 in opinions now) on the missing persons debate is as follows;
1. Holding a lot of racing-only events is not a good idea. Older people don't have the time to ride so often and many don't want to race anymore, as they have "been there, done that" in their earlier riding years.
2. Ride days or unscored racing is a good idea and should be done more often. But not on the Saturday of a race meeting...as an event on a Sunday in thier own right, instead of competitive racing.
3. Entry on the day without penalty fees should be be mandatory for club days. Entry on the day should also be OK even for larger meetings, with a nominal penalty fee (e.g. $10-20) applied. Organising the motos should be able to be done during the practice period, it's not rocket science. A lot of people don't know for sure if they can make it to an event until just before and having penalties imposed is a big turn off. A club should have confidence in the fact that people will want to come to thier events and be able to gauge how many people will show up, without forcing them to pre-enter.
4. Events should include extra activities such as show n shines, BBQs, social activity.
5. Better coordination/thought about event scheduling throughout Australia. We have had way too many event conflicts recently which don't help anyone. Email makes it pretty easy nowadays to coordinate with other clubs...
In particular, NO other vintage events should be scheduled on the same weekend as Vintage National Title events.
6. Tracks should be Vintage bike friendly - regular modern MX tracks are a big turn off to many older riders, along with being actually dangerous and bike wreckers. If this means the clubs having to find more farmers paddocks to use as tracks, then so be it.
Well, that would be my wishlist.
