Quote:
Originally Posted by astroron
When I was in SCAS on the Sunshine Coast we where insured for well over Ten Years without a single claim,then they trippled the premiums of all the Astronomical societies,and upto that time I had never heard about one claim against an insurance company by any Astro society or club.
What a Rip Off 
This is the first claim I have heard since I have been doing Astronomy, which is over 25 years,and they want to put the premiums up 
Cheers |
Those insurance hikes came about because a bunch of insurers went to the wall for dodgy practices and the remainder took advantage of it with the logic that because they were bad managers we, the public, have to pay. SCAS went to the wall because if incredible premium hikes, and I think it was only a year later that the astronomical community organised to get reasonable cover/premiums... Very sad Ron, that we lost one of our sister clubs. Another aside to this was that events as the SPSP and the Queensland Astrofest were specifically excluded from insurance, something that was a shock to us on the committee as we thought thast as a club event (multiple clubs at that), we would have been covered... very sobering that every member on that committee would have been personally liable for any incident. Add to that we ensure that it is as dark as possible and than leave mostly dark coloured equipment setup around the place.
Couple of points made is that after only one claim the premiums are going to be hiked substantially... perhaps a delegation should once again negotiate on behalf of the astronomy clubs for a better result (I'm not volunteering).
Second point is that it is an astronomy viewing night so you should expect it to be dark. This is true, but the public doesn't think that way and as David points out that if your dark sky policy compromises safety, you may be held responsible. On thing comes to mind is if it is a public event, is it absolutely neccessary to have total blackout? Surely you are not trying to show someone the fine detail of the Horsehead Nebula? Our club has been doing our public nights at Mt Coot-tha Lookout for about 15 or 16 years. The only thing we find that public are able to enjoy are views of the Moon, planets, maybe some open and globular clusters and perhaps some double stars. The place in not suitable for serious observing, and why should it be? We show the public stuff big and bright flashy because that is what gets their attention, and if they develop an interest, then they can search for the faint fuzzies that we find so interesting in the field and on camp after they join a club. How many people have shown an object like the Swan Nebula to a newbie from a surban site and got a "Wow!"?
The last thing that I have in mind is that it seems that people are saying that the person was recklessly running around in the dark up and down stairs. I still don't know the details but from what I have read is that there was not even a handrail prior to the incident, and no indication where the stair edge was. Surely if you were just invited to look at the 1st quarter Moon, stepping away from the scope and found that stairs were nearby and down you went. Imagine you have a broken leg or a knee injury from this incident, suddenly you can't work, and when you point out that here was a saftey issue with the positioning of the stairs and that you couldn't see it because it was not indicated, surely you can't say "Tough, its a viewing night, you should know it's going to be dark"?
Again, we don't know the circumstances, so we can't say whether the claim was justified or not, but the ony person that can claim is a person from the public and not neccessarily someone that is educated in our hobby as we are.