----- Original Message -----
From: Rocky Entriken <rocky@tri.net>
> Apparently, according to the fellow involved, there is a line in the
> warranty about it being void if the car us used for racing purposes. The
> real question here is the one you raise below: Is Solo II "racing"?
>
> We in the sport say it is not. But we also tend to refer,
conversationally,
> to "going racing" (I always try to avoid such usage).
Since I surely *don't* want to reopen the arguement, "Is Solo II racing,"
look at it from a different standpoint: "Does Solo II *look* like racing to
the outside world -- especially that part of the outside world not entirely
sympathetic to warranty and damage claims?"
Taking the viewpoint of an uninitiated observer, I see somewhere between 30
and 1000 cars show up at a site, most wearing or changing to special tires,
and adorned with numbers and various other motorsport decorations. The
drivers don helmets, then one at a time, tear around a temporary course to
see who can negotiate it in the least time. Every now and then, a car spins
and knocks down some cones. In some events, *two* cars are on the course,
each trying to reach it's starting point before other. And in others, the
cars are started by lights typically associated with drag racing.
The SCCA says it's not racing. Team.Net says it's not racing. Fine -- it's
not racing. But insurance companies, and the accountants and lawyers who
run them probably haven't heard of us, and if they've heard of the SCCA,
it's probably from seeing the Runoffs on Speedvision, or hearing about an
SCCA-sanctioned road racing event somewhere. We can say what we want, but
autocross is no longer the gymkhana events those escape clauses in your
insurance policy were designed to exclude from the definition of "racing."
And to outsiders, it looks something like...well, draw your own conclusions.
> I once tried to buy life insurance policies on two teen-agers from State
> Farm, and was informed the premiums would be doubled for their "racing
> activities." At the time they had not yet turned a wheel in competition,
but
> the intended activities were only Solo II. State Farm would not be swayed
> and a 20-year relationship (3-4 cars and homeowners) was abruptly ended as
I
> pulled all my business from them and went elsewhere.
I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see more of this. The down
side of no longer being a secret sport is that more and more people know
*something* about it -- and we know what a little knowledge is good for. In
risk assessment, *reality* often takes a back seat to *perception.*
> My (former) agent was
> fully aware of what Solo II was and had been for years; he had no problem,
> it was a corporate decision/ruling from higher up. I told my agent his
> company cost him my business.
While autocrossers may outnumber any other form of motorsport participant
other than couch potatoes with Speedvision and Fox Sports, we're a miniscule
portion of the insurance market -- losing our premiums doesn't hurt much,
while the perception of future claims does. Insurance companies may exist
to provide financial insurance against disaster, but they're also for-profit
institutions -- and like most businesses, they'll work to maintain that
bottom line. And a warranty is just another form of insurance, underwritten
by the automaker (another for-profit institution), or...an insurance
company.
I can only relate what a USAA customer service rep told me several years
ago: from that company's standpoint, as soon as laps are being timed or
there's some means of figuring out who finished first, it's racing. No one
consults the SCCA or us to hear the other definitions. So far, we've been
low-profile and claim-free enough that it's not been worth anyone's effort
to identify us. It sounds like perceptions are changing, and we'd either
better figure out how to deal with it or be buried by it.
I don't have any answers -- but if we manage to avoid denial and flames,
this is certainly a worthwhile discussion topic for the future of our sport.
Jamie
'92 Prelude Si
Speed Demon...uh, Driving Skills
http://www.mindspring.com/~jsculerati/sdr
|