We have got a cycling newsgroup on the intranet at work and I lifted this
one from there.........it was the first I had heard about it and it does
seem a bit excessive to me??
Gags
While this is quite an unfortunate incident, my god, get real!! People have
got to be responsible for their own actions. If this girl was going to ride
the track it wouldn't have made bugger all difference if the council erected
a fence. This sort of stuff makes me so mad, if you're that out of control
on a bike there's a million ways not to commit to a jump. IMHO she had every
intention of attempting the jump and just stuffed it, sorry but that's
nobody else's responsibility but hers 13 years old or not.
Anyone else have an opinion on this one?
A NSW woman left brain damaged after a BMX accident as a teenager was today
awarded almost $1.4 million in damages.
Rhiannon Rigby, now 23, successfully sued Shellharbour City Council and
South Lake BMX Club in the NSW Supreme Court over an accident at an Albion
Park BMX track on November 11, 1995.
The then 13-year-old lay in a coma for nine days after crashing as she went
over the first hump of the track.
She sustained permanent frontal lobe brain damage.
Justice John Dunford found both defendants were negligent because they
failed to fence off the starting pad and ramp on the track.
"Such fencing would not be disproportionately expensive and would have
prevented the plaintiff approaching the first jump at such high speed and
this would probably have prevented her fall, or at least rendered it much
less catastrophic," he said.
However, Justice Dunford reduced the payout by 20 per cent because he said
Ms Rigby had known of a previous accident at the track only a few years
earlier where a man had died.
Justice Dunford ordered the two defendants each pay half of the $1,373,992
damages.
AAP
and this from the ABC Website
Woman wins $1.4m damages after BMX bike accident A New South Wales woman
will receive damages of almost $1.4 million after the Supreme Court found a
south coast council and BMX club were liable for injuries she suffered as a
teenager.
Rhiannon Rigby was 13 when a friend dared her to ride down the starting ramp
at a BMX bike track at Albion Park, south of Sydney, in 1995.
Ms Rigby crashed her bike and suffered frontal lobe damage which has left
her with a severe and significant disability.
She has since been unable to maintain a job and has a young child.
Supreme Court Justice John Dunford has found that the Shellharbour City
Council and the Southlake BMX Club which operated the track were negligent
because the starting ramp should have been fenced off from the public.
He has awarded Ms Rigby provisional damages of almost $1.4 million, with the
amount to be finalised next month.