[Closed] Liability insurance/legal support cover NOT CTC or BC?

With BC you get a 10% crc discount voucher, 10% off in halfords and a race licence..
Maybe enter the battle on the Beach ?

Why £41.50?

I just renewed with CTC for £18

cloudnine - have no need of a race licence.

connect2 - presumably you belong to a club for affiliate membership?

I just renewed recently and it was £41.50 as well.

I think it's worth it though as the money helps them carry on campaigning.

Hasn't their remit changed from campaigning to charity work? I already support two charities and have no wish to support a third that used to be an organisation run for its membership.

Not as far as I'm aware! In fact the latest email from them (today) was one inviting me to a "cycle campaigner workshop" (which I assume they're running/organising).

why do you want liability insurance?

zilog - yes, I received that invite too.

mtbel - useful to have when riding on the road. A good friend has CTC liability cover and unfortunately needed to use it, 22 months in and it's still not resolved. She's had many many hospital visits.

CTC has become a charity, but that hasn't changed it's raison d'etre. Still very much a campaigning organisation and well worth supporting IMO.

I think the Charity status hasn't changed the campaigning end of things. They may get a financial boost from gift aid as a charity and be more accountable through reporting to the Charity Commission.
I too have my CTC subs reminder to get round to paying - or at least finding on my desk...

Still very much a campaigning organisation

Well, they've managed to lay off both their mountain bike campaign officers over the years, and pretty much walked away from access campaigning recently, while they have been almost silent over the new forest cycling issues.

It seems as if if its nothing to do with London commuters or helmet compulsion, they're not interested anymore!

Thanks for the replies, I've just got a bee in my bonnet that mtb doesn't feature on their radar anymore.

Have you not seen all the complaint letters in Cycle about too many MTB features?

I think CTC were mentioned in the New Forest saga as refusing to sign up to their stupid charter?

I think they are still working away but often a bit too quietly for their own good. That said, if they had more active members/campaigners they might be more vocal/visible.

Didn't realise that they had two mtb officers, thought it was just one. I noticed they ran a feature on the New Forest sportive fiasco and, yes, didn't get the impression they were actually going to do something.

Yes, there were two, They got rid of one a few years ago, about the same time they disbanded the 'fix that trail' rights of way side of the pothole website.

My understanding was that they had refused to kowtow to the NFNPAs silly charter, which is what I expect them to be doing with my money.

More pertinently, a mate has used CTC legal cover a Coue of times, and has been very impressed. Not that I want to try it for myself, obviously

http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/20150122-blow-hopes-campaigners-cyclists-alike-new-forest

I guess they can't just keep burning funding on a lost cause?

Was out last weekend on a stretch of road with a fair amount of traffic. Transit van overtook me very closely sounding his horn, he cba'd waiting til there was sufficient room. It's times like that that I'm glad to have some cover particularly as I have crumbling bones.

That always sucks. 🙁 The liability insurance from CTC would be more for if [i]you[/i] hit the Transit though rather than the other way round. If it hit you I'd expect any ambulance-chasing firm would take it up! The CTC do have their own preferred law firm which they hand you over to (as I understand it, rather than it being handled by CTC staff), I suppose they might give extra help if you were having trouble for some reason though.

Yes, there were two, They got rid of one a few years ago, about the same time they disbanded the 'fix that trail' rights of way side of the pothole website.

Is the MTB thing a bit chicken-and-egg? If all the MTBers won;t subscribe to the CTC because it's "not for them" then they'll be right, it won't be.

Surely we should be encouraging as many MTBers to join as possible, then we'll have a louder voice in an organisation which, rightly or wrongly, is about the only place the powers that be tend to go when they need to do some consultating about cycle stuff?

edlong - one thing I noticed when I purchased CTC membership was the complete absence of a question asking what type of riding I participated in. Marketing fail!

I agree it would be good if they sent out surveys, etc, asking about members' priorities and what direction they'd like the campaigning to go in, etc. It's too easy to be passive. Maybe I'll drop them an email suggesting that!

asking about members' priorities and what direction they'd like the campaigning to go in

they do. last one may 2012.

[url= http://www.ctc.org.uk/sites/default/files/1205_ctc_infra-fin.pdf ]results here[/url]

I note that the 2013-2020 strategy states 'we will provide effective leadership in protecting the interests of off road cyclists' and that 'For both on-road and off-road cyclists we will be the natural home.'

Which I personally have real difficulty tallying with the prospect of having nobody in the organisation having a full time off-road remit, especially where, for example, rights of way law & advice constitutes at least as complex a subject in its own right as roads safety (one staff post) or PR and media (two staff posts)

Which I personally have real difficulty tallying with the prospect of having nobody in the organisation having a full time off-road remit, especially where, for example, rights of way law & advice constitutes at least as complex a subject in its own right as roads safety (one staff post) or PR and media (two staff posts)

Agreed and you'd be the perfect candidate. 😉 Assuming that becoming a charity changed their focus but they've actually taken their eye off the ball. Does BC have anything to do with off road?

I believe they recently took on someone, but I think his role is in heading up leadership qualifications etc (?) rather than 'advocacy'

mtbel - useful to have when riding on the road. A good friend has CTC liability cover and unfortunately needed to use it, 22 months in and it's still not resolved. She's had many many hospital visits.

Getting our terminology muddled - liability insurance is covering you for damage/injury that you [u]cause[/u]. CTC and BC membership include this

Legal expenses cover is when you are making a claim against someone else who has caused you injury or damage. CTC cover includes this, they have "specialist" personal injury lawyers you can use with experience of cyclists claims.

Serious injuries claims do take a long time to finalise - you can't work out what a claim is worth until someone is fixed, or as fixed as they are going to be.

mtbel - Council have admitted liability, that evening the damage in the road was repaired. It took an accident for the road to be repaired despite it being regularly reported by local residents. Friend was knocked unconscious hitting her head, taken to hospital by ambulance where they failed to carry out a CT scan of her head.

She was unable to work for some time (self employed), her life was a round of appointments to her GP regularly, optician, dentist, maxillofacial consultant, orthopaedic consultant, audiologist, neurologist and more. Some of these appointments were not local and she was not fit to drive.

She will eventually be reimbursed for her written-off bike, accessories, clothing and travel expenses. I've noticed a big change in her since the accident, it's not something you completely recover from. She's been very brave.

I've had to use the CTC's legal department and have nothing but praise for them, I wouldn't have a roof over my head now had I not had that cover, my accident was life changing.

Council have admitted liability, that evening the damage in the road was repaired. It took an accident for the road to be repaired despite it being regularly reported by local residents. Friend was knocked unconscious hitting her head, taken to hospital by ambulance where they failed to carry out a CT scan of her head.
She was unable to work for some time (self employed), her life was a round of appointments to her GP regularly, optician, dentist, maxillofacial consultant, orthopaedic consultant, audiologist, neurologist and more. Some of these appointments were not local and she was not fit to drive.
She will eventually be reimbursed for her written-off bike, accessories, clothing and travel expenses. I've noticed a big change in her since the accident, it's not something you completely recover from. She's been very brave.

Fwiw, I'm sure that my last BC renewal was <£20 for ride (liability and legal cover) membership.

Wow! as above. best wishes to her. what was the damage in the road?

sorry if I'm being insensitive.

I suspect my home insurance won't be sufficient.

wouldn't it ? ( I really don't know) I found BC were useless in my situation (once the driver left the car assaulted me and jumped on my bike)..wouldn't help me because the driver was no longer a driver and no longer covered by his car insurance. If I'd wanted to pursue the damage further I think my household insurance would have been interested as they cover my bike.

[quote=cinnamon_girl ]I suspect my home insurance won't be sufficient.

Not that I'd want to put you off being a CTC member (reasons for that discussed above), but I'm very confident that it will be. All home (contents) insurance policies I've ever looked at have included public liability cover which covers you for cycling - and I've looked at the terms of quite a lot of policies, whenever somebody claims that theirs doesn't.

Though as also discussed above public liability insurance only covers you for when you hit something due to your fault. What you seem to be wanting is legal cover, which isn't necessarily a standard feature - a lot of policies now only include it as an add on. Though I'm less than convinced how important that is for any of the incidents mentioned on here, as I reckon most solicitors would happily take them on on a no win, no fee basis (I do love the way such companies are described as "ambulance chasers" when they only get involved if you contact them 🙄 )