Quote:
Originally Posted by Bongle
Actually, I can completely understand the shops needing to carry insurance, now that I think about it. If someone slices their arm off because of a poorly-maintained band saw in some team's trailer, someone is liable. Who is that someone? It's definetely not FIRST from FIRST's perspective, but since it occurred at a competition held by them through tool-sharing that they certainly encourage, a jury might find them liable.
Hopefully the steps required to become FIRST-approved are reasonable. Perhaps on practice day you'll just have to have it inspected, show your liability policy, and have your shop crew tested.
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Insurance makes sense.
More than anything, people seem to be reacting to this awkward place FIRST has been in for a few years. In a lot of ways, the organization needs to grow up and start acting like an adult -- and I perceive some of these rules and regulations to be how they're showing their authority. At the same time, however, FIRST still relies almost entirely upon a group of volunteers to run its events and they need to involve those people in the organization more before they start to jump ship. Teams and individuals incur significant costs while volunteering as mentors or at events and FIRST can't pretend that we'll continue to absorb increased costs while, simultaneously, receiving less visibility into why we're being told to do some of these things.
If they don't yet have it, the additional cost of insurance to teams that have invested in mobile machine shops is probably inconsequential. I think the least that FIRST can do, however, is offer some explanation as to why we should bear the burden of this additional cost.