Get in the swim…
Ever more diverse, ever more exciting, water sports present an intriguing challenge to underwriters, observes Roger St. Pierre
Ever more diverse, ever more exciting, water sports present an intriguing challenge to underwriters, observes Roger St. Pierre
According to the European Commission-supported EuroSafe organisation, nearly 70 per cent of European Union (EU) citizens, a quarter of whom are accompanied by children aged under 18, spend their summer holidays by or on water. Sun, sand, sea and the other thing beginning with ‘s’ are the classic ingredients of that long awaited mid-year vacation, but these days holidaymakers, especially the younger set, are looking for something more than just a leisurely swim in the ocean or soaking up the rays on a poolside sunbed.
Active holidays
Action is what they crave, and this can range from the well-regulated and generally safe environment of a water park like Orlando’s renowned Sea World to an ever-expanding range of so-called extreme sports, from cliff diving and swimming with sharks to exploring dangerous underwater caves. What underwriters consider to be an extreme sport often depends on how hard the envelope is being pushed by the insured person. Surfing the relatively benign waves of Cornwall is one thing, tackling monster 50-foot Hawaiian surges capable of wiping out a small village is something else again.
But exactly what does constitute unreasonable risk taking? Commented Toronto-based claims consultant Doug McKenzie: “Mass participation and often unsupervised jumps off high piers, jetties and cliffs have become a nightmare for insurers. Courts in the US, Britain and other countries, including here in Canada, have ruled that if large numbers are doing it, either in groups or as individuals, then something cannot be deemed to be unreasonable and reckless behaviour, which means claims must therefore be honoured.”
The new-found and worldwide quest for adventure is reflected in the statistics. The accident rate for UK citizens travelling to the Continent has more than doubled over the past four years, says Brussels-based EU statistician Claude Henri: “In Europe as a whole, more than 40,000 serious injuries are caused by water sports and boating annually,” he reveals. Determining where an insurer’s greatest level of risk exists is a complex and often confusing exercise. Of all the many water-based pursuits popular in the US and UK, for instance, it is said that, rather surprisingly, angling has the highest annual death toll. Falling into rivers or getting cut off by fast-rising tides, most of the victims of angling fatalities die of drowning.
Different activities present different hazards: the two most common causes of sailing fatalities are being hit by the boom or falling overboard; while a recent German study revealed that 56 per cent of kite surfing injuries were caused by being unable to release the kite from the harness; and recreational head-first diving accounts for 70 per cent of all spinal chord injuries in sport and recreation activities across Europe. Forty per cent of hit and collision injuries in Portugal last year were caused by diving into shallow pools, lakes and rivers. Also in that country, 83 per cent of child drownings occur in unprotected swimming pools located at private homes or hotels, rather than on the 150 kilometres of coastal waters. Around 230,000 injuries, mostly to children and teens, occur each year in Europe’s swimming pools while, according to the Amsterdam-based Child Safety Alliance, drowning claims around 5,000 child and teen lives in Europe each year. Across the Atlantic, the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention says that around 10 people a day drown in the US, with nearly 80 per cent of victims being male.
The accident rate for UK citizens travelling to the Continent has more than doubled over the past four years
Cover calamity
Among the most popular water sports underwriters have to cater for are canoeing and kayaking, water skiing, surfing, sailing, rafting, scuba diving and snorkelling, wind surfing, kite surfing, deep sea fishing, speed boating, shark diving and jet skiing.
Most of these have surprisingly good safety records – the vast majority of participants never experience anything worse than a few bruises, cuts and grazes, especially when the activity has been conducted under skilled tuition. It’s interesting that there’s a paucity of water sports listed among the profusion of ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Activities’ lists now littering the Internet. Scuba diving is a case in point, with lower accident rates than you might expect. Most travel insurers across the globe will cover this sport, either free or with a premium loading of between 10 and 20 per cent, but demand that the insured had taken professional training and achieved PADI or SIS open-sea diving certification – and they certainly require notification of the activity. Cave diving is a different matter. Lighting failure in very low visibility, getting lost, running out of oxygen, the infamous and often death-inducing bends and hypothermia are just some of the potentially lethal hazards. Since the sport’s beginnings in the 1960s, some 500 participants have died in the Caribbean (including Florida and Mexico) region alone, leading many insurers to either exclude the activity completely or demand a heavily loaded high-risk premium.
Most water-based activities give great enjoyment but, sadly, things can go disastrously wrong. When he lost his job as MD of a record company, Alan Bell decided to take an extended break in the Greek islands to lick his wounds and ponder his career options. He’d always fancied trying water skiing and signed up for a trial lesson, but when the boat took off much faster than he had been expecting, he was too scared to rise up from his crouched starting position and soon started to feel an excruciating bloating pain and paralysis that quickly made it actually impossible to stand. It turned out that water was being forced up his back passage, resulting in a ruptured intestine, emergency evacuation and a six months’ stay in hospital.
Truly tragic was the freak accident that took the life of the popular 41-year old English folk-rock singer Kirsty MacColl who was scuba diving with her two boys, aged 14 and 15, off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. The star was run over and decapitated by Percalito, a luxury speedboat owned by Guillermo Gonzales Nova, reputedly the Latin American country’s richest man.
The inflatable banana boats found on lakes and inshore at countless resorts promise harmless fun but, back in 2010, 11-year old schoolgirl Mari-Simon Cronje suffered horrific leg injuries and died when she slipped off one on a recreational lake at Bedfont, near London, and was hit seconds later by the tow-boat, as it executed a turn with the driver seemingly unaware that the victim was in the water – an incident leading the venue’s owners to being charged with corporate manslaughter.
Even more disastrous was a 2013 incident at Padstow, in Cornwall, UK, when an entire family of six was thrown out of a speedboat, leaving the vessel circling at high speed with nobody at the controls as its scythed its way through victims struggling in the water, killing 52-year old BskyB executive Nick Milligan and his eight year old daughter Emily and leaving the four other members of the family injured, including Milligan’s 39-year old wife Victoria, who had to have her left leg amputated below the knee.
According to the research centre at the School of Sport Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, in England, common water sports injuries include shoulder and back problems for canoe and kayak paddlers, and face and lower limb injuries for wild water rafters. Yes, people get hurt – even killed – but what little global information exists gives the impression that wild water activities are nowhere near as dangerous as many underwriters perceive, nor, it seems are many other activities on or in the water.
Over the years, there’s been lots of media focus on the supposed dangers inherent in jet skiing, but the figures don’t seem to bear this out and many insurers around the world who previously excluded it now cover this activity without extra premium or excess, though they might insist on prior notification.
It remains a fact, however, that users of powered water craft (PWC) – that’s jet skis and wave runners – are 8.5 times more likely to get injured than are users of other motorised watercraft and, overall, on a worldwide basis, more than 355,000 people are injured in recreational boating accidents yearly. In fatality terms, recreational boating is second only to road accidents and surpasses even the aviation death toll. Interestingly, PWC are the only recreational water craft whose users are more likely to die of blunt trauma rather than drowning. Motor propeller strikes are the leading cause of death to PWC users, and also claim many swimmers as victims. A significant 24 per cent of injuries associated with PWC occur to users with less than an hour’s experience of using such machines: “The big problem is that taking part in hazardous water sports activities whilst on holiday is often a spur of the moment decision, like deciding to hire a moped or take a bike ride. Even those who are aware they will not be covered by their standard travel insurance policy often decide to take a chance, rather than miss out on what they see as a once in a lifetime experience," observes Julie Smith, business development manager of Avanti Travel Insurance who revealed to ITIJ that one of her office colleagues had recently done exactly that.
Said Dr Shauna Sherker of the New South Wales Injury Risk Management Centre, in Australia: “There are clear risks in water sports, but it is a fact that the most prevalent sports injury incidents all take place on dry land, with the various football codes together accounting for the greatest number of sports deaths and injury hospitalisations in our state. None of the water sports even figure in the top 10.” American studies throw up similar results. Horse riding appears to create the most sporting injuries and deaths. Amazingly, cheerleading is up there too – think of all those human pyramids and body contorting gymnastic moves – whilst the red flag dangers of bull riding should be no surprise. But water sports? Again, none even makes top 10.
There’s been lots of media focus on the supposed dangers inherent in jet skiing, but the figures don’t seem to bear this out and many insurers around the world who previously excluded it now cover this activity without extra premium or excess, though they might insist on prior notification
Industry stands ready
Where once it was often difficult to obtain water sports insurance, today there’s a profusion of providers, from major international insurers to specialist underwriters. Available travel insurance products reflect this. From its Cape Town call centre, Columbus Direct provides free cover under its single trip and annual policies for more than 150 different sports and other activities, many of them waterborne. A leading specialist provider for more than 20 years, they now boast a 15-million strong customer base worldwide. “There’s an ever-wider range of water-based activities that are gaining big numbers of devotees and that obviously creates considerable potential for market growth of suitably tailored travel insurance products,” said a Columbus sales executive.
Said a spokesman at travel insurance specialists World First: “Our policies now cover a wide range of water sports and activities as standard, including surfing, snorkelling and wind surfing. We also offer insurance for water polo, swimming with dolphins and kayaking, as well as scuba dives up to a depth of 30 metres. These policies provide £10 million of medical expenses coverage, £2 million of personal liability and 24/7 emergency assistance.” Essential Travel’s website is another that offers water sports insurance for as little as £7 per week’s cover in Europe, including up to £10 million of medical cover.
London-based Harrison Beaumont will cover most water sports, including the extreme ones, and also offer water sports equipment cover from £1,000 up to £10,000 at home, in storage, in use and in transit, with worldwide cover and new for old replacement.
“Products vary enormously across the industry, with all manner of different inclusions and exclusions, so this is a market where we really should be at pains to advise our clients to read the small print and make sure they sign up to the right deal,” advises Avanti’s Julie Smith.