ORIGINAL: adaptabl
The problem is we all have the same insurance. An accident at any of our clubs could cost us all our insurance(another accident or two and no carrier will take us on). Some of the rules may not seem like a good idea to some menbers, but we all have to go the extra mile to keep our fields safe. Extra fences and new rules benefit everyone.
General rules may be fine for you. Your club may be safer than the rules require. The problem is the club in the next city may not be safe and we will all suffer.
If you truely believe that
one more accident will cancel our coverage then you should hang up your planes now and sell all your kit before it becomes valueless because we are going to have another accident !!! The law of averages dictates it. The barriers are not going to prevent a run away aircraft in flight from seeking out a target nearby (house , car, etc anything within a 1/4 mile or more) and eventually random chance is going to result in a bad event. Even Ronnie's description was not "No one panicked and the barrier did its job" It was " a Large plane got loose at the NATS after landing and went right into a pilot stand,missing the adjoining pilot and scattering some judges ". Sounds more like luck than good design, but perhaps it is simply Ron's brief description of the event that makes it seem that way. Do not misinterpret what I am saying, I am not advocating do nothing, I am advocating reasonable rules with value added.
As for insurance, we will likely always be able to get insurance ... it is the premium that will change and we will have to change with it. Car insurance used to be hundreds ... it is now thousands. Perhaps in future a much larger portion of our dues will be insurance premiums (~13.50 right now) and we will pay them if we wish to fly. Maybe we need different rates for different classes of aircraft or pilot experience or whatever IF research shows that certain groups are at higher risk than others, however as we do not record information on the accidents that we do have (and there are LOTS) we have no way of knowing what causes accidents. In fact that would likely be the best safety rule we could adopt ... to report all accidents and try and identify causes.
JH