While our motorcycling champions behave more than honorably in the various World Championships, a danger as insidious as it is very real hangs over the very existence of motorcycling sport in France.
This threat, although it remains largely unknown to the general public, is currently the number one concern of the French Motorcycling Federation which is fighting tooth and nail, namely legally and financially, for the survival of motorcycling sport in France.
If she does not win her fight, the competitions could stop.
At the start of the year, Mr. Jacques Bolle, its president and former Grand Prix winner, kindly took the time to enlighten us on the situation.
The article is long and sometimes difficult, but the risk run by all those who still want motorcycling sport as a whole to continue, justifies making the effort to read it.
For this reason, we are publishing it in two parts.
First part.
Recall of facts; Since a decision by the Court of Cassation in November 2010, French insurers who cover competition organizers intend to double premiums each year to ultimately achieve an increase that could reach, or even exceed, one thousand percent.
Initially, the FFM reacted by temporarily finding a British insurer offering more moderate prices.
Mr. Jacques Bolle, president of the FFM, was kind enough to enlighten us on the different aspects of this subject which, despite its complexity and its legal terms, deserves our full attention.
Mr. President, can you tell us what your objectives are for the coming year in the face of the current major problem in motorcycling sport in France?
Jacques Bolle: “The objectives of the French Motorcycling Federation are to resolve our Civil Liability insurance problems, since we still have this sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. We had a small improvement in 2014 since we managed to find an English insurer who guaranteed us reasonable prices for 2014 and 2015 and, as a result, with competition arriving, the French insurers moderated their price increases. That said, will the English stay in the long term? We don't know anything about it since everything will depend on the loss experience and there, it is certain that at the beginning "everything is fine" but, subsequently, losses can be declared a year after the accident, etc. This is seen very often; an accident occurs in year 1 and the dispute is not declared until the following year, or even two or three years later.
I therefore hope to be able to continue this collaboration and to always be able to offer our organizing clubs reasonable prices and, on the other hand, to be able to find a lasting solution with the government with whom we still work almost daily on this issue, but without success for the moment.
We also have another track, the legal track, since the cases in question will come back to the court of cassation. We hope that we will perhaps have a less drastic decision than the one that took place in 2010, that there will perhaps be a pendulum swing which would return towards a slightly more middle position. I would like to remind you once again, especially since people often don't realize it, this issue is really decisive for the future of our sport in France.
When our insurers announced to us that they were going to double the insurance cost each year for three years, even four years, or multiply their rates by more than a thousand percent, this created an absolutely unbearable burden for the clubs. This is obvious, especially since insurers could not guarantee that this annual doubling would stop after the first four years.
With this English insurer, we have managed to stop this bleeding but I hope that they will stay for a very long time, which will not happen if the results are not good. And at that moment, the group of French reinsurers which, I remind you, brings together all French insurers, will start its increases again, justifying itself even more by the failure of the English. »
Could you, for the general public, recall the origin of this untenable trend?
Jacques Bolle: " There are two things. On the one hand, a major trend which is the “judicialization” of society. That is to say that, now, more and more, people initiate procedures as soon as they have a problem or disaster. On the other hand, there was a notable development in the Court of Cassation which occurred in 2010, which is what we call a reversal of jurisprudence; the court of cassation called into question that what is called in law "the theory of acceptance of risk", a theory which considered that someone who voluntarily puts themselves in a situation of danger, by practicing for example a sport at risks, could not then claim compensation for the losses or injuries he would have suffered during this risky practice, if the organizer had not been at fault. It was the act of assuming the risks that one took, without this being able to give rise to compensation if the organizer had not committed a fault.
In 2010, there was a reversal of case law and the magistrates now consider that, even if you knowingly put yourself in a situation of danger, and even if the organizer was not at fault, you can still, in some cases, give you compensation. And the cases where compensation is given are growing more and more.
So, in the past, organizer liability insurance was intended to exceptionally cover a loss, because the club had made an error or a mistake. This happened from time to time. I remember an example from almost thirty years ago, on a French circuit; there was only one commissioner at the station where there was an accident. The commissioner had been cut down and injured in the first accident. Another off-track accident took place at the same location and the motorcycle started to burn and its rider was seriously injured. There, it was considered that if the marshals' station had been normally armed, that is to say with three people, the consequences of the accident would probably have been much less, and this is a case where the insurance company the organizer had to intervene.
But cases like that were relatively rare; there was one every 4 or 5 years.
Today, insurers are obliged to intervene several times a year, and for claims whose cost, again, is clearly and constantly increasing.
To visualize the phenomenon, we can roughly say that what was compensated in francs in the 80s is today compensated with the same figure, but in euros. Even taking into account inflation, today we compensate 4 to 5 times more for the same injury or the same damage than in 1985, for example.
So insurance costs are increasing, and above all, the number of claims to be covered increases considerably, since magistrates today consider that the simple fact of offering a risky activity, motorcycle or any other legal activity practiced in full knowledge of the facts, increasingly obliges the organizer to compensate for losses occurring during this risky practice.
Today, we therefore consider that it is no longer up to national solidarity to take care of a 20-year-old young person who is paraplegic, but to the organizer who proposed a risky activity, and therefore to his insurer.
This is the situation we are in today, which explains why insurers thought that costs were going to explode and considered that insurance premiums would have to be multiplied almost by a thousand percent.
This is absolutely unbearable for the clubs. For an organizer who paid very little, let's say a trial, whose insurance cost was around 300 euros, this increases it to 3000 euros. It's a lot but with some subsidies, including that from the federation, it can still be considered. But, to take another example, for the Enduro du Touquet, which today pays 50 euros of insurance, this would increase it to 000 euros, and there, it is totally impossible, even with a subsidy of the Federation. »
