Safety is the new Sanctity?

[hakerh]

Ekk and I have been doing a lot of musing lately about safety regulations and insurance in various historical recreation and mundane venues. Ekk is Merganser's representative to a new 18th century naval and maritime reenactors' group in Northeastern North America (which sounds a lot more impressive than it is, though there are 40-something groups

Comments

[aishabintjamil]

Actually my understanding of the pavillion incident is that the insurance never entered the picture. We were told that SCA, Inc. could not legally simply pay their medical bills because that would be providing benefit to an individual, which would be illegal for us as a non-profit, even though we were quite reasonably at fault. (We chose to use less than optimal stakes, and had not erected the pavillion with all the side poles it was designed to be used with

[tchipakkan]

I don't think that the SCA's insurance is ever represented as other than covering the SCA against lawsuits. There may have been some confusion because people like the idea of insurance for individuals, and assumed that if it was required that's what it was for. The LHA (Living History Association) once offered insurance for individuals and or groups for activities at events, but I don't know if that's gone the way of the dodo. Probably. For that kind of insurance you'd have to get an insurance company to actually figure out what the risks were, which they wouldn't bother doing unless they thought they would make money by offering the policy. Their estimates would probably be weighed heavily toward their making money- just in case anyone did get hurt, and policy holder costs would only go down if there were thousands of them demanding and proving that the costs were way out of line