A talking point ...
Printed From: ProfessorPaddle.com
Category: General
Forum Name: Whitewater Forum
Forum Discription: Open Discussion Forum. Whitewater related subjects only
URL: http://www.professorpaddle.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13014
Printed Date: 29 Apr 2024 at 4:15am
Topic: A talking point ...
Posted By: ChristianKnight
Subject: A talking point ...
Date Posted: 09 Apr 2013 at 10:54pm
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In response to the kayaker's interview given to Q13 Fox regarding the fatality on the Green, I'd like to propose one basic talking point to this group here:
If you ever find yourself in an interview with a reporter, who seems intent on getting you to describe how dangerous the river is, please, instead, point out how safe it can be with the appropriate level of skill. Statistically, whitewater kayaking is quite safe. In the media, however, kayaking is a victim of the "Lost Denominator" effect, partly because the only time kayaking is covered in general media is when an accident occurs. As a former reporter and mag editor, I understand why a journalist might want to steer the interview toward the dangers of whitewater—no, it's not as simple as sensationalism; it has more to do with an established paradigm that is reinforced every time a kayaker looks into the video camera and talks about all the risks he's accepting. And as a person who works in public policy, I also understand how interest groups can get traction on almost any ambition simply by uttering the words "public safety." Don't help any group get traction on limiting whitewater access by turning it into a public safety issue. Thank you. ------------- Catch your eddies, Christian |
Replies:
Posted By: Jed Hawkes
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 2:47pm
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My response to the safety issue is always "it's the safest thing I do". It's safer than driving to the river, crossing hwy 2 at the split rock takeout, safer than riding my bike in the city.
Thanks for the tactful talking point Christian. ------------- The line will become apparent 978-273-7723 |
Posted By: jerryclayross
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 3:04pm
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I think it's a really good point to make, and I'm really thankful that we're learning from this experience. The media does make an effort to sensationalize their news, because that's what sells. I do think though, that as the small educated percentage of our non-boating communities as a whole, we have a responsibility to educate the rest of society on the dangers of white water sports. Because it is so easy for anyone to rent, or buy equipment and then put themselves in a dangerous situation thanks in large part to a lack of understanding, I point out the risks of kayaking every time I go out with any person new to the sport. here, I think it is better to error on the side of caution and warning, as it will demonstrate how aware we are of the potential dangers of running water, and our commitment to creating safe places for others to learn about them. Kayaking CAN be a very dangerous sport, and even though there is always a risk of someone taking one or two situations out of context, for me, when something as tragic as what happened on Sunday does occur, I reminds me that the sport I love brings with it an incredible amount of responsibility, and a level of risk that is completely dependent on my personal experience and skill level. Thanks again Christian for starting this dialogue about how we, as a community can work to educate those with less understanding of what it means to be on a river, and thank you everyone on the water for lookking out for, and helping out your fellow boaters. |
Posted By: not-very-clever
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 4:13pm
| if you watch fox news, you're a f-u-cking idiot |
Posted By: chipmaney
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 5:31pm
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Originally posted by not-very-clever
if you watch fox news, you're a f-u-cking idiot don't be a jerk. this has nothing to do with politics. and also, if you're gonna spew, be a human and put a name to the avatar. f**king pussy. ------------- sitting all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end |
Posted By: chipmaney
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 5:34pm
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i say this to point out to you that it doesn't feel good being called a f**cking anything...be nice. ------------- sitting all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end |
Posted By: BIGWATER
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 7:46pm
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i agree with Jed that driveing to and from the river is more dangerous than running it , and i would love to hear that soundbite on the news
and i also think that rivers can be dangerous ... but the difrence between the two is a subject for another thread
even if you dont watch the news, when you type in a search for an event that happened in this area three stations will come up kiro , komo, and Q13.... and im sure most people would look at all 3 ... and im sure people search all the boating sites they can for info also ... these boating web sites and social media sites are becomeing the new media and we should watch what we say on them just as much as in front of a reporter if not more so .... be nice
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Posted By: not-very-clever
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 10:01pm
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this is pete morgan living in tacoma
fox news is the epitome of horrible news. seems like all television news is pretty f-ing bad. they hire ridiculous journalists, its a huge joke. the kayaker on fox news didn't do a good job representing for kayaking because the journalist didn't do a good job extracting the story. if you want a story that captures the outdoor adventure, listen to "the dirtbag diaries" any radio show on NPR is quality. even the NPR weather man is brilliant. (cliff mass) . seriously. whens the last time you said that about a television weather man? television news feeds the ignorance! |
Posted By: Kiwi
Date Posted: 10 Apr 2013 at 10:19pm
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bullsh*t on driving being more dangerous than kayaking/climbing.
Maybe I'm a outlier, but I've never gotten hurt behind the wheel (knock on wood) and I don't know anyone who has seriously injured themselves. Now, riding a bike, that's some dangerous sh*t, my buddy almost smeared himself over the highway last week doing 150 (he's a dumbass). Still, you are way more likely to fu*k yourself up on the river/cliff rather than the road. Not saying that it isn't worth it, because I continue to climb and boat when I'm in WA, but it isn't sunshine and happy flowers. |
Posted By: James
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 7:40am
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NVC - I gotta watch your posts more often, they are classic "if you watch fox news, you're a f-u-cking idiot" "any radio show on NPR is quality" The discussion of how to talk to media is valid, unfortunately the emotion and impulse at the heat of an event can affect how people are viewed and able to respond. News as Jerry and NVC point out has very little to do with presenting events for the purpose of information and education but rather sales and ratings. I don't care if it is NPR, Komo, Kiro or Fox, you can turn your dial to little guys like POTUS but the bottom line is that once they make it to a certain $$ level they gotta maintain too. I listen to all sorts of news radio, I tune into NPR to get a laugh at some of the Communist and Socialist Wack Jobs and then I tune into FOX to get a laugh at some of the Ranting and Rabid Freedom Lunies. Unfortunately what you listen to has very little to do with being a f'ing idiot. I would say what you choose to accept as truth is one part of being an idiot, and the biggest part is then how you choose to communicate what you have come to believe with others. Wouldn't you agree NVC?  |
Posted By: BIGWATER
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 8:47am
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ok fine i guess ill have to exsplain why driveing is more dangerous then kayaking
water always follows the laws of gravity , and if you know how water works it is very readable people dont always follow the laws of the road , no mater how good a driver you are someone can always blow a stop sign or go the wrong way on 520 and kill you ... and this is beyond your control on the river it is you and the physical world , other people may be around , but realy its your actions alone that determin your fate ... water wont suddenly decide to flow up hill , but just because there is a lil yellow line on the road dosent mean someone cant cross it and kill you at any time the river environment is very predictable , the only realy random factor is wood and most seasoned boaters have learned to fear and respect the possbility of wood on a river and take precautions to lessen the danger
i trust the river , it always follows its laws.... i dont trust people
personaly i would much rather drown on a river then get crushed in my car by some drunken idiot .... more people die on the roads in the US every year then almost anything else
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Posted By: BrianP
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 9:17am
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It seems like this would be an easy problem to solve. Number of people engaging in the activity divided by the number of deaths gives you the answer I believe. You could just look at the number of deaths for each activity and compare but you need to balance out the different numbers of people who kayak vs drive. How many paddling deaths last year? 20-something including river accidents involving non-paddlers I think. A lot more people are killed, maimed, disabled, etc, in cars, but more people drive so who knows. Anyways, that would be a useful statistic to drop on a reporter.
My instinct though, is that driving is more dangerous than paddling, but saying I don't know anyone who has been in an accident is pretty limited in scope. I have the opposite situation as you, Kiwi. I've had three friends die in car accidents, and at least three more who are lucky to be alive after bad crashes. On the other hand, I don't know anyone personally who has passed away on the river. Neither of our experiences are broad enough to generalize that one is more dangerous than the other, but it sure would be good to know. So anyone here that's good at math/statistics should tackle this, AW may be a good starting point. |
Posted By: not-very-clever
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 10:17am
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You are correct james: critical thinking is more important than what news source you choose. And yes, NPR is not gospel. The show “all things considered” doesn’t always consider everything. And the show “this American life” often reports on foreigners. And Car Talk, jesus they talk more about marital problems.
In reality I get my news from unbiased news sources like the Stranger. However, we should all agree that cliff mass is the best weather man out there. He has a PHD and teaches at UW. He is innovating weather forecasting technology. I share the same excitement that Cliff mass has for the weather, and I will weed thru the rest of the NPR to hear cliff mass talk about off-shore currents and convergence zones! |
Posted By: septimus prime
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 10:40am
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And what a great radio voice on top of all that weather knowledge. ------------- Jon Shell Bee |
Posted By: JayN
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 10:42am
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Originally posted by not-very-clever In reality I get my news from unbiased news sources like the
Stranger. Sarcasm? |
Posted By: Travisimo
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 11:00am
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Originally posted by JayN
Sarcasm? Sadly, I think not. How the heck did we get to politics from an awesome conversation about representing kayaking/rafting in the media? Great points Christian, the general public thinks of us as adrenaline junkies that cost taxpayers money for rescues. That kind of attitude can end our access to rivers, it definitely has in the past. I hadn't really thought about it, but we should all stress the amount of effort we put into safety and the low accident ratio whenever we talk to anyone. I know I'm guilty of only talking about carnage with non paddlers... This got me thinking about that. ------------- H2O please |
Posted By: James
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2013 at 1:26pm
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Cliff Mass, Agreed, there might be some other better person doing the same thing for another area that I don't know about ,but when it comes to the great NW, I generally don't look any farther than his blog.... If only there were a widget to stream his forecasts on my phone!!! Travis, I would guess it is Sarcasm... but none the less, I would point out the very Phrase "unbiased news sources" is a Oxymoron. What makes a well informed person is the ability to gather news from all those various "Biased" Sources and then Determine what you choose to believe based on your view and study of the topics and facts. I find that sites like Al Jazeera and RT often SPam complete Propaganda that is then repeated like Gospel on Shows that range from NPR broadcasts all the way to stuff like the Alex Jones show. Then you have the occasional hard Fact truth put out there by these guys that is totally trashed talked by the same people due to bias and failure to properly research... but hey some people would rather be spoon fed information that makes their little bellies all warm and fuzzy so they can keep their world view secure in continuity. Don't ask me to help persuade people to the truth because that is the problem we are discussing, the only solution is for more people to give a honest rip about what truth is.... or in the words of Johnny Cash... This old world's wakin' to a new born day And I solemnly swear that it'll be their way You better help the voice of youth find "What is truth?" |
Posted By: fiddleyak
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2013 at 8:13am
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Christian (and Jerry): great points, definitely worth thinking about. This would be a good topic for SiteZed.com
Personally, I don't believe the statistic that driving is more dangerous than whitewater kayaking. I've known more people that have died kayaking and I know a hell of a lot more people that drive than kayak. What I have seen is that the people that are exposing themselves to the most risk are those who are pushing the limits of their ability: class III boaters running some IV, IV boaters running V. Know your limits and be extra cautious when you decide to step it up! The amazing thing is that it is true that the sport can be done very safely, even at the expert level. Sadly, though, we do deal with a random element that can never be completely controlled, risk can only be minimized with good judgement and experience. With regards to FoxNews, yes, people who get all their news from this one source do not have a very good handle on what is actually going on. But it's clear that the extent of the failure of our media extends well past this one outlet. As James said, the only way to go is the read as many different sources as possible. If all you read are articles in the NY Times or Google News, you are not giving yourself enough breadth of sources! |
Posted By: BIGWATER
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2013 at 11:53am
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driveing and kayaking are the two most dangerous things most of us do ... and the actual numbers are not the point (altho it would be nice to get some actual numbers) ... its the type of danger
the danger in kayaking is your choise, you wana run class 5 thats your choise , you scout a drop and decide to run it , your choise ... infact if you should never find yourself running anything you dont want to if you are well informed and responsible ...like fiddleyak said most problems happen when people step to far beyond there skills, wich is ultimatly there choise.... kayaking is volentary
driveing is manditory , if you live in the US you have to drive or at least ride in cars ... now i know someone will say that they live in the city and ride a bike and dont own a car, but im sure they have to get in a car from time to time ... and you sure as hell wont be kayaking without cars
the point is we decide to kayak the rivers we run and the people we boat with......yet people are forced drive cars and we have no choise on who is in the oncoming lane behind the wheel
if you honestly feel safer on the road then you do on the river, you are either running things to hard for your skills or you are in denial of the huge danger that is flying down the road at 60mph .... people are truly numb to the dangers of driveing, we have to be, since we have to drive
again its the type of risk , while kayaking your actions determin your fate ... while driveing the actions of every dumb ass behind the wheel determins your fate
i trust myself, my boating partners and the river (and i pick them) .... i dont trust the general population or the condition of what ever they are driveing (and i have no choise in the matter)
kayaking its you vs. the natural world ... on the road its you vs. a sea of machiens (many of wich are not properly maintained) driven by god knows who ..... personaly i feel much safer in the natural world
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Posted By: paddlingjeff
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2013 at 12:14pm
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http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Article/view/articleid/1614/display/full/
article studied the risks and argues that paddling ifs safer than driving. |
Posted By: BIGWATER
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2013 at 12:43pm
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thx for the link! here is a quote from it Although whitewater boating fatalities have been getting increased attention in the last couple of years, the actual fatality rate for whitewater kayaking (2.9 in 1998 per 100,000 participants) is not as high as a few highly-publicized deaths would lead you to believe. In comparison with other sports, it is safer than scuba diving (3.5) and mountaineering (3.2). In fact, driving a car is arguably more dangerous than whitewater boating, as the fatality rate for driving a passenger vehicle is 15.2. think what ya want ... but if you dont feel safe on the river you may not be and you need to change something to make it safer... just cuz you never used a throwbag or a life jacket mounted river knife or a pin kit doesnt mean you never will ... and just cuz you never rescued someone on the river or got in a car wreck dosent mean it wont happen ... learning from personal exsperience is good, but we need to look beyond that and learn from eachother so we dont all have to go through the school of hard knocks
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Posted By: irenen
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2013 at 1:15pm
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So that study used data taken from 1994 to 1998. I bet a lot of it still applies, but 15 to 19 years is a long time in a sport in which a lot has changed in terms of gear (safety and boat-wise) and the types of water being run. One could argue that because safety gear has improved probably the danger is less, but typically with statistics it's a bad idea to assume anything - other things could be true as well, i.e. the sport might be appealing to a different segment of the population now, people in general might have different attitudes about what kinds of risks are acceptable, etc. I basically think we don't know based on that study. People like me who think that kayaking is more dangerous than driving appear to be doing what I do and using an admittedly unscientific and anecdotal evaluation based on the fact that the ratio of kayakers we hear about being killed compared to the number of people we know who kayak is greater than the equivalent numbers in terms of the drivers we know. And I don't think anyone talked about 'feeling' unsafe on the river, just about the overall safety of the sport compared to other things. ------------- It's all fun and games until someone loses a paddle. |
Posted By: BIGWATER
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2013 at 11:17pm
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Originally posted by irened People like me who think that kayaking is more dangerous than driving appear to be doing what I do and using an admittedly unscientific and anecdotal evaluation based on the fact that the ratio of kayakers we hear about being killed compared to the number of people we know who kayak is greater than the equivalent numbers in terms of the drivers we know. im confused , that sounds more like "feeling" then "thinking" to me, since you are throwing logic right out the window , sorry it is possible you know almost every kayaker in a given area ... but there is no way you can know every person driveing a car in a given area .... again lets try and look beyond our personal experience and look at the broader picture i give up on this thread .... good luck and be safe no mater what you are thinking / feeling |
Posted By: JayB
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 10:23am
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If you really want to get a handle on how risky something is, you have to look beyond the total number of deaths. More specifically, you've got to factor in how many people engage in the activity and how much time they spend doing it. Something like risk =total number of annual participant-hours/annual fatalities. When you index the number of fatalities to the amount of time that people spend driving vs kayaking, you get a massively different and much more accurate picture of how risky kayaking is relative to driving. It's not even close - kayaking is *vastly* more risky than driving. The only reason why it might appear otherwise is because so few people do it, and spend so little time boating relative to the amount of time they spend driving. Ditto for rock-climbing, alpine climbing, and every other activity that the average person rightly considers dangerous. If alpine climbing, kayaking, etc really were less dangerous, that would be great for lots of reasons, one of which is that I'd get a nice little discount on a life insurance policy for all of the time that I spend doing them instead of driving. What actually happens is that as soon as you disclose that you participate in these activities, your premiums skyrocket, if you can get coverage at all. I think you can have a much more interesting discussion about risk once you get away from big statistical aggregates and make things more granular. When it comes to risk, "kayaking," is way to broad a category to have useful discussions about risk levels within boating. Even though we have numerical ratings for rivers that go from I-V, IMO the risk increases exponentially once you start moving from III-IV even though the numbers don't. Throw in how often the river gets run, how often the river bed changes, how flashy the run is, how far it is from cities/towns, how gorged in it is, etc and you've got a super-granular and dynamic set of risks, and that's even before you start talking about how the characteristics of the paddlers affects risk levels. It's kind of an old and tired topic, but I wish that kayaking had a richer shorthand for communicating. In climbing, there's an overall commitment rating, a technical difficulty rating, and a danger rating - and at a glance you can tell that a climb rated (I, 5.9) is something vastly different from a (V, 5.9, R/X) without knowing anything more about the climbs. Since it's been talked about for years and nothing has ever come of it, it'll probably never happen, but it'd be nice to have something that a novice or someone outside the area can take a quick look at and see that even though the Green and the MM both have III-IV ratings, the Green is way more sustained, hazardous, and inaccessible than the MM. ------------- -Jay |
Posted By: ChristianKnight
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 11:56am
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JayB--That's a well-thought-out perspective. And I appreciate it. I wasn't intending to delve into a statistical analysis of kayaking or a statistical comparison of kayaking vs. driving. But since that is where the discussion veered, consider this: You are right that the discussion should consider participant-hours as the denominator in the equation. And I would assume life insurance companies make similar calculations, which is why you might find the following story odd: In 2006, my wife convinced me that I should get life insurance, with a newborn girl and a kayaking habit, and all. The agent quizzed us on the basic health questions: smoke, cancer, age, health history, etc. Then he started asking lifestyle questions: "Do you rock climb?" My answer was yes. He did not like that answer. He called the actuary. The actuary told him that little lifestyle detail would triple my premium and, more than likely, doom his sale. So he asked me to "retire" from climbing. Essentially, I had to tell him that I had no immediate or foreseeable plans to climb. I struggled with the morality of it all. But eventually, I did concede I had no immediate or foreseeable plans to climb. My wife, in a moment of excessive honesty, asked him about whitewater kayaking. She told the agent that I paddled Class V regularly. Would that be a problem? I glared at her and when he looked away, I mouthed the words: "What are you doing?!" He called the actuary again. And the actuary called him back ... about five minutes later. The answer was somewhat shocking: I didn't have to retire. I didn't have to lie. I could keep my plans to paddle Tumwater that weekend. In the world of life insurance, the actuary did not find any correlation between my whitewater kayaking lifestyle and a need for a premium increase. Of course, the reasons could be many: They have no data on whitewater kayaking, I suppose. Or, perhaps they do, and the data suggests whitewater kayaking's influence on mortality is not all that significant. ------------- Catch your eddies, Christian |
Posted By: James
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 12:51pm
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Christian, What is more likely in the case is that whitewater kayakers in general are cheap O's and don't buy life insurance so there is probably little to no history of claims payments and adjustments based on the sport. Could they find data on Fatalities sure, but if the parent corp, branch or actual has no history on file of payouts little research is likely to be done. I have life insurance also and I was 100% honest with our guy like you were and Kayaking was not an issue at all... Skydiving was however. |
Posted By: ChristianKnight
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 2:14pm
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James: I'm no actuary, but I'd be willing to bet an insurance actuary bases rates on more than claims histories. Relying exclusively on claims histories for an accurate perception of risk would just be too much of a skew. ------------- Catch your eddies, Christian |
Posted By: phil
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 4:22pm
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So, I have no real knowledge about the life insurance world, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of kayaking activity is recreational flatwater boating, and that your life insurance company doesn't break out a separate whitewater category. So when you tell them you kayak, actuarially it looks like a nice nature tour and some exercise. Whereas if you're like "I'm a skydiver, actually," well, 100% of skydives involve jumping out of an airplane.
Similarly, while that AW study sounds sort of comforting, the rivers include SF American, Deso/Gray, Lodore, the Yampa, the main Salmon, and Hells Canyon among others. All high traffic, technically very easy runs. There's no Class V on the list, and the runs that stand out as more difficult/committing (Illinois, Selway) have wayyyy fewer users than the big ones. I'm not claiming the risk for boating harder rivers is higher, just that it is not addressed in the study. |
Posted By: Scott_H
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 4:59pm
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No issues with kayaking when I applied for life insurance either.
But it is a mystery to me why an actuary wouldn't somehow have factored in ww kayaking by now because I sure seem to have had more "oh sh*t" moments kayaking than climbing and yet it was the limited climbing that I do that has me paying a crapload more for life insurance. ------------- “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” |
Posted By: JD_G
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2013 at 7:33pm
| I went through the same deal, when it came time to get life insurance for the sake of family. What was interesting, is that I'm free to engage in any activity, including "offing myself by whatever means" aka shooting myself. The only exception was no racing motorcycles (past hobby). No ban on sky diving, climbing, kayaking, running through traffic naked.....you get the idea. I was amazed that the insurance company would still pay out if I shot myself, but that I couldn't race motorcycles. |
Posted By: JayB
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 12:12am
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Good discussion:
1. JD-G: Who is your broker/insurer? Seriously. 2. I suspect that participation in WW kayaking is so low that when they ask an actuary to compute the risk that they should factor into premiums, the answer is "Tilt." 3. If we had good data, there's no way anyone would ever argue that WW kayaking was safer than driving. 4. Risk in boating, like in climbing is the product of objective and subjective risks. There's a certain amount of risk inherent in, say, hitting the Green at 5K that guys like Christian, Chris, JP, Fish, and all the rest of the A-Team can mitigate with skill, fitness, experience, training, etc. Is the likelihood that they'll be in serious peril from all of the objective risks they encounter high? Not at all. Is it still massively higher than they risks that they encounter getting too and from the river (tweakers included)? Yes. That's one of the reasons that I proposed basing river ratings on my Drunken Tuber Scale (TM), so that we can take skill out of the equation by imagining the most likely fate that would befall a drunken tuber in jean-shorts, high-tops with checker-pattern laces, a mesh Slayer World Tour half-shirt, and chinese knock-off Oakley Blades if he were to drift into a given rapid. V = certain death. IV+ = near death and likely hospitalization, IV = one or more possible near drownings and/or lots of bruisings and an overall classification as a "bogus" experience, III+ = rude awakening/buzzkill and high probability of being "pantsed" by the current while clutching to a rock/log - followed by an earnest cost/benefit analysis of the pros of accepting help vs the cons of revealing the magnitude of the shrinkage once on shore , III = capsizing followed by flashing devil/hang-loose/rock-on sign to any onlookers who happen to be present, II = high-fiving and cracking another Schmidt Ice after each wave train, and I = passing out and drifting past the sand bar where your buddy saw all of the hot chicks hanging out last week. Try it with your favorite rivers. FITW gets a V at the highest flows that people run it at, more due to blunt trauma than flush drowning, a IV+ when the cup is almost totally submerged, and a IV at the levels that I usually run it at.... I've been pushing it for years, but if this latest round of discussing communication and risk does nothing else, I hope that it will clearly establish that the DTS is a concept that the boating community needs to embrace, and soon. ------------- -Jay |
Posted By: tiziak
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 6:28am
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Don't we have an insurance actuator in the boating community?
------------- If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Daniel Patrinellis 360.434.4616 |
Posted By: JD_G
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 9:11am
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Jay, It's Banner Life insurance. Here's a link for getting a quote. Like the DTS rating system. http://www.bannerlifequote.com/ - http://www.bannerlifequote.com/ |
Posted By: James
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 9:42am
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Christian of course the base their rates on more than just pay outs, but Payouts are what raise the flag pure and simple for further research. In the transportation world I can give tons of examples about how tons of accidents were occurring on specific HWY routes but until big payouts occurred the research was never indexed and then turned into variables for rate adjustments. The balancing act of risk for profit is nothing new in businesses if not rudimentary. Just like your agent said, don't tell me, or promise me you will quit. He said that because he wants your account/money and doesn't think it will ever come back to bite him. And he is probably right. But I promise 100% that if he really thought the risk of a settlement subrogation would come back to him which in all cases does with adjusters, agents, and or sales people, then he would never accept the risk because he would know the risk was worse than the reward. These agents and offices simple look to their past and use judgement until it bites them or someone they know or the business enough that a memo is sent out that scares people away from either ignoring policy or working around it. |
Posted By: fiddleyak
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 10:28am
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I signed up for Permanent Life Insurance. It costs a lot more than term but it has the benefit of basically being retirement savings that can be used as income tax free later in life.
This book basically details why this is the best way to save for retirement, since it basically exploits a tax loophole: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1425110827/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=18956529397&hvpos=1t2&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=19411300532014076181&hvpone=10.62&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_30kzmhbfyz_b All my agent cared about was whether I scuba dived. That means, given how much I kayak, life insurance is an extremely high value (not for me of course) |
Posted By: JayB
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 12:23pm
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It's worth mentioning that there's already a real-world precedent for my ratings scheme. "Jeff's Joy was named after Jeff, surprisingly enough, whose surname has eluded me for years. Jeff was a tyre-tuber of great repute who worked in the forest around Murupara. He accompanied one of the first trips down the river in the early 1970's. Apparently he tubed the top section and by the time he got to the final drop (now named after him) he was unconscious from the beating he took on the way. His mates duly revived him and he lived to tell the tale and have a rapid named after him. Good on ya mate" http://rivers.org.nz/nz/bay-of-plenty/rangitaiki/jeffs-joy-run The DTS. Its time has come. ------------- -Jay |
Posted By: Scott_H
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 1:54pm
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"Nah, you're cool. It all goes"
------------- “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” |
Posted By: phil
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 3:41pm
| This thread is awesome. |
Posted By: JayB
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2013 at 5:45pm
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These guys are totally messing up the calibration by wearing PFD's, having a BAL below 0.15, and not holding a Milwaukee's Best tall-boy in one hand, but I'm going to add it to this thread for reference purposes. ------------- -Jay |