Gary R.

And to top it off check with your agent/policy because even IF you have a multi-M umbrella you may not be covered for liability on the track. It will be very interesting to see the end of the Ben Keaton case in CA...

softright

You can sign all the waivers in the world, but that will not prevent a civil case against you that could clean you out...

Phokaioglaukos

Defense costs can be high, no question, and without an insurance carrier to defend you there can be a lot of cost to be borne by the defendant. The waiver, if effective and I think the PCA waiver is pretty good, should give you a cheap and relatively quick defense to the claim. As the with the CA CGT incident, when there are big losses there will be claims even in the face of a good waiver.

38D

My mental math was: 3 out of 200 cars damaged in the average 3 days DE weekend, so 1 car per 200 per day. That's a 0.5% chance per day * 365 normal driving days in a year = 182.5% chance of damage, or roughly 1 accident every 6.5 months (I rounded). Ok, so maybe the normal driving days per year is more like 200, but that's still a huge difference between the 4% per year stat you posted.

I'm not against DE insurance, just think it should be spelled out in a policy and paid for appropriately.

Bull

In the past 5 years, I haven't seen anything close to 3 cars per 3 day event, or 1 car per event day, but as you point out there are no published numbers that I am aware of.

Anyway, I agree that the insurance should be bought and payed for.

Wreck Me Otter

Well...I had planned on switching to State Farm but I guess they don't want my business...

DanS911

I guess the only solution in the near future will be to buy a cheap car (like a '76 911) do a lot of expensive modifications so that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Then if you wad it up one day you can sell off all the parts for what the DE insurance would have given you anyway!
Brilliant!

Bob Rouleau

FWIW I see nothing in the wording which began this thread which would affect coverage of a DE. As someone pointed out, they may close the loophole.

Something to consider is the fact that many incidents result in minor damage which is never claimed. When looking at statistics for on road accidents, averages do not apply to high performance cars which have shown much higher accident rates than the 'average' car.

I wonder if it's possible to do a correlation to see if DE participants have lower accident rates than the general population. We should be better I think.

Best,

mooty

yes, i have moved from GT3 to cayman S.
i may move down another notch to something even slower. hum spec 911, 944 or spec boxster comes to mind if i were to stay in the porsche fold.

38D

Redread the clasue and note the placement of the semicolon.

hacker-pschorr

With every day cars going faster & faster, this is no suprise. It blows my mind it took this long. This year at RA a newbie was on the track with a stock street car (sorry, not at the liberty to give specific details). First lap he was clocked going into turn 1 at 160+mph - with no instructor.

And we wonder why the insurance companies are changing the policies?

I track a 1979 928 for a reason. It's a lot of fun, loud, handles great, and if I roll it off the wall, I can buy another one for less than most new car payments.

I've said this before - you should never take a car on a race track at speed if you are making payments on it.

Bob Rouleau

Colin, I read it several times. If the intent was what you think it is I think it should be worded as follows -

There is no Liability Coverage: while a vehicle is off public roads and being prepared for, used in practice for, or operated in any racing, speed, hill-climbing, jumping, or other similar contest; or on a track designed primarily for racing or high-speed driving.

On the other hand my native language is French

Phokaioglaukos

I envy you. I so wish I could speak French. Especially as my wife and older daughter can.

The SF text is not perfect, but when read against the language that was there before the change it is quite clear. No cover for DE.

38D

Grammar wise, it is basically the same. Net-net, you get this:

"There is no Liability Coverage...on a track designed primarily for racing or high-speed driving."

Mon Français est très mal

penguinking

i think i saved myself in insurance claims by going to DE's cause the skills ive learned have kept me from wrecking my car on the street. ive even gone so far as to take the fast car (porsche) and keep it on the track and drive the suburban on the street .

how much more popular is DE getting? i know for a fact that it hasn't risen as quickly as other things lately (ie texas hold 'em poker...and NASCAR) DE has been around for a long time. i'm sure these arguments have gone back and forth for a long time as well. anyone who's been doing this for a while, was there this much controversy in the past?

as far as the language of a policy- it can't just be changed on a whim. policy changes involve the state ins commissoner and other parties. the actual policy stays the same for the most part. in fact, most ins companies policies are the same (within each st). maybe the # of accidents has risen significantly in the past to warrent the change now. but consider the number of DE cars versus # of policies in america. 200 million drivers or so? and probably <200,000 total cars doing DE? believe me, insurance companies arent taking a big hit.