Should adventurers have to pay for their rescues?

Some states have, so far, been unsuccessful in enacting laws to recoup costs of rescues. Rescuers say if enacted, someone might wait too long to call for a rescue and lives may be at risk.

So, I guess that we are going to have to continue to pay for rescues of the foolhardy and adventuresome.

Do y'all agree?

From Reuters: http://news.yahoo.com/stranded-u-adventurers-rescues-come-cost-141653582.html

I think that if the person has been made aware that the feat may be extremely risky and continues anyway they should front the costs associated with rescue. Many rescuers are volunteers and have better things to do than to save some adrenalin junky when his latest stunt goes bad. Also, rescuers paid and volunteer risk their own skins to save victims who cannot self rescue. I wouldnt mind seeing people being held responcible for the deaths of rescuers who perish trying to save them.

I agree to a certain extent. I wish it was cut and dry... a line in the sand, if you will, for determining excessive risks. I think that someone free-climbing (without safety lines), solo-sailing around the world, base-jumping, or a similar dare-devil exercise, should be charged for rescue.

On the other hand, if a tourist is stretching their legs at an overlook at the Blue Ridge Parkway, or is picnicking at the lake... is bitten by a copperhead, I would feel that they shouldn't be charged for rescue actions.

I purposefully picked extremes for examples because those are easy to call. There is a lot of gray area in between. For instance, what if you are in Cades Cove in the Smokies and hike the mile or two down to the waterfall down a well-used path and badly twist your ankle or break your leg on a slip? Would it make a difference if you were an alpine hiker or weighed 350 lbs?

I have mixed feelings on this as well. I wouldn't want to see someone endanger his or her life even further out of fear of the expense of a rescue.

Aha.....I have a new idea for even more insurance. "Daredevil's insurance", for those with a wild, adventurous bent.

Hmmmm........come to think of it, I was a daredevil in my younger days. I once spoiled an air show by crashing an ultralight from 40 feet and then cart-wheeling it three times. That was the first and last time I ever flew an ultralight, though I continued to fly other planes for years. I never really gave a thought to what my rescue may have cost in terms of manpower.

Ouch. I feel guilty. Sort of. But not too much.

PBulldog2 wrote:

Hmmmm........come to think of it, I was a daredevil in my younger days. I once spoiled an air show by crashing an ultralight from 40 feet and then cart-wheeling it three times. That was the first and last time I ever flew an ultralight, though I continued to fly other planes for years. I never really gave a thought to what my rescue may have cost in terms of manpower.

Ouch. I feel guilty. Sort of. But not too much.

I used to dive off bridges. One was the old Alabama Point Bridge. The water was so shallow you had to arch your back right after hitting the water so you could bounce off the bottom on your belly (instead of hitting on your head). I dove off that bridge a lot.

Another place we dove from was the Bagdad railroad trestle. If you dove straight down, there were deadheads (cut-off pilings just under the surface) and you didn't want to hit them, so we dove with a good kick...

I only dove off that railroad bridge once. I rode over there in one of two black hearses full of hippies and we had Harley escorts. People would pull off the road in respect for a bunch of hippies. One old man spit at us when he realized what was happening.

Then I surfed hurricanes for almost 20 years, including Camille.

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PB, do you have pictures of your ultralight experience?

No, Eric, I don't have any pictures, unless I can find the copy of the Santa Rosa News Press that I saved for so many years. They ran a before and after shot of that poor ultralight. It looked like an accordion when I finished with it. That happened back in 1981.

Broke my femur, my wrist, my hand, dropped a lung and had a walloping concussion for a couple of weeks. Eleven days in the hospital. By all rights I shouldn't have survived. The worst part was one of my sisters was attending that air show.

Somebody suggested I look on Youtube to see if I could find anything, but I couldn't. I found a couple of videos of Lazairs (the type of ultralight), but no shots of me or that particular craft.

The biggest problem with my ultralight experience was I had no ultralight experience. I was only trying to learn to taxi. The darned thing got airborne at 17 mph, and that was that. Boom......!

And yeah, I remembered reading once that you surfed Camille, you daredevil you!

The most daredevlish thing I do these days is work in my garden. I've broken two ribs in five years just falling down, so skydiving may be safer for me!

Easy call.

Illegal: Bill the party rescued
Activity that is tax or revenue generating (parasailing, skiing, mountain climbing): No bill
Act of God and acting in prudently: No bill
Act of God and ignoring public warnings: Bill
Activity that is purely stupid but legal: No bill but publicly mocked on the city Facebook page.

PBulldog2 wrote:

I have mixed feelings on this as well. I wouldn't want to see someone endanger his or her life even further out of fear of the expense of a rescue.

Aha.....I have a new idea for even more insurance. "Daredevil's insurance", for those with a wild, adventurous bent.

We had amazingly good insurance when I worked for GE and it's been long enough that I forget now what it was called, but my husband and I always bought extra insurance because we DID do a lot of really dangerous stuff. We took all the options to insure ourselves for 4X our salaries (the maximum) w/longterm disability if either of us were injured while riding dirtbikes, for example and had a terrible accident, plus had an umbrella policy for $3M. It was all pretty inexpensive because we were young and we had such great insurance. But you never know when and if something terrible is going to happen, and god forbid, if you're going to accidentally hurt someone else or some if someone is going to sue you.

I think that people who take part in risky, dangerous activities should take responsibility for themselves and their actions. But yeah, where do you draw the line?

Free climbing, deep free diving, and wingsuiting may be legal, but aren't they risky activities? To them, they're not taking unnecessary risks. Where do you draw the line on stupid?

I think daredevils will be daredevils, insurance or not. It's in the flippin' genes.

One person's daredevilishness is another person's normal. To me, surfing sounds like a horrendously dangerous sport. That's because I have a fear of drowning that stems from childhood. Dirt bikes are scary to me, too, because I flew over the handlebars the first time I tried to ride a motorized scooter. And don't even ask me to ride as a passenger on a motorcycle. My sister had a huge one, and she had me ride around the block with her one time. I nearly bruised her by holding on to her so hard. I am terrified of motorcycles.

Flying airplanes (ultralights excluded) never bothered me - I loved it - but to some that may seem a fool's rush. Trust me when I say single-engine planes are nothing like ultralights in terms of control. In that Lazair, the stick came down from the top, and the stick action was opposite to what you would have in, say, a Piper Cub. In the Lazair, if you push the stick forward, it means "go up", when in a Cub, it means "go down." When one wing of that Lazair became airborne while I was doing a taxi, I pushed the stick forward in an attempt to stay on the tarmac, and the rest is history. I would have done better if I had had no flying experience, because my automatic actions were opposite of what the Lazair required.

Anyhow, trying to draw a line between what is "normal" risk-taking and "stupid" risk-taking is such a subjective experiment. I don't know that it could be done.

I just checked out an article on Wiki about Lazairs. Take a look at this excerpt:

The third series of the single seat Lazair introduced customer requested upgrades, such as:

landing gear widened to 46 inches (1,200 mm)
jury struts for increased negative-g tolerance
conventional floor-mounted control stick
toe brakes[1][3][8]

Seems like I was not the only customer who had problems with that stick!

Ultralights look like a lot of fun... gliders too. But I don't think I would have enough control to do it safely. I admire people that master those skills, but it doesn't mean that I want to do it

Being one of the windiest places in the country and mountainous to boot, this place is a magnet for gliders, ultralights and hang gliders. As small a town as it is, we have two airports... one of them is commonly referred to "the gliderport" and is almost all ultralights and gliders. I have always wanted to go up in one, but never have... someday I will... You can hardly live here and not. When I was younger I always wanted to hang glide... then I broke my knee and my tibia. Not so much anymore.

No

When I was still racing, I had the standard track insurance for anything that happened to me, but also bought more in case I injured other people, especially fans in the pits or stands. I was covered by my own insurance everyplace I was involved with relating to the race car, including simple things like going to the part store for oil. I was also covered by my standard navy medical because I was still active duty or retired. Thankfully, I never had to use it.. :-)

Who would make this call, politicians, boards, emc? This is a door once opened
Lots of unintended consequences. Where i go i don't want rescue it's part of what makes it real.

whowherewhy wrote:

Who would make this call, politicians, boards, emc? This is a door once opened
Lots of unintended consequences. Where i go i don't want rescue it's part of what makes it real.

You hit the nail on the head, WWW. There is too much gray area between idiocy and having fun in nature. Like zero-tolerance in schools, there is always an idiot making the wrong call. (A kindergardner making a gun symbol with his fingers and saying "bang" has been disciplined...)

But, I do carry an EPIRB (distress radiobeacon) on my boat. I'm not a blue-water boater... just a wimpy coastal (intracoastal) cruiser. I like to park it somewhere, anchor real good and break out the blender!!!

Eric, just curious.. Did you ever get your lumpia that you mentioned on the PNJ forum a yr or two ago?? Susan's at 9 South 3rd Street has them @ 12 for $6..