AMA Annual Insurance Report:
Are There Lessons WE Can Learn?
From the Safety Coordinator
A review of the March 2008 AMA Annual Insurance Report and other articles available on the AMA web site reveals some interesting information. Around 45 liability claims are reported annually (30-property; 15-bodily injury). “Injury claims typically involve fellow AMA members actively involved in modeling rather than spectators or bystanders.” As one might expect property damage is usually a small part of claims payments. The most common cause of injury is “lost control of aircraft.” Some of the severe injuries have included: eye injury to a child caused by site condition; eye injury to child when struck by aircraft; adult struck by ¼ scale at full throttle; adult struck by small plane, with severe blood loss and complications; motorcyclist struck fence erected by club; adults struck by helicopter blades, one fatal and two others with serious, permanent injury.
The AMA liability program that comes with your annual AMA membership “protects AMA members in two important ways: 1) protects AMA members or clubs and site owners who may be the subject of lawsuits brought by injured parties; 2) approximately 70% - 80% of the amount paid for these claims are paid to AMA members or their respective families for their injuries.”
Let us not become complacent and think an accident can’t happen to us or at our field just because we haven’t had one. There have been several “close-call” incidents where we “lost control of the aircraft.” Build your aircraft with safety in mind; do all the safety checks the instructions call out; perform a good center of gravity (CG) check and check all servos for proper travel, centering, and freedom of movement; conduct a transmitter range check at the flying field; and fly safe!
Bill Duncan
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