Setting up a bike tour business

[luain]

Hi,
I'm looking to start a guided bike tour, I have got a quote for public liability insurance but was looking for some advice on some of the legal exposure I might have. The tour uses a mix of private property, dedicated bike paths and some public roads. I intend to rent the bikes myself from a local bike shop.

My main concern is if my customer on the tour (and I suppose my supervision) were to crash into a car and cause injury /damage on a public road what is the situation? I posed this to the insurance broker and he said the case would be between the cyclist and the car driver, depending who was at fault. While this sounds fine from my point of view, I still feel I might have a duty of care but as I hope to take groups of 15, I can't supervise everyone.

Also in the above situation and a customer was acting recklessly and did crash into a car but claimed the brakes on the bike weren't working etc. do I get the car driver to take it up with the bike shop I hired it from?

I'd be grateful of any feedback or other angles I haven't thought of as I want to move forward with my plans. Thanks in advance!

 

[Brendan Burgess]

First of all, you would have to set up a business like this through a limited company to limit your personal liability in the event of a claim which turns out not to be covered by insurance.

Have you checked the websites of other bike tour companies? What disclaimers do customers have to give? I suspect that the probably charge for insurance or build it into the cost.

I would think that you need two types of insurance - public liability for damage done to a member of the public by one of your cyclists. This would be cheap enough. But you will also require professional indemnity to indemnify yourself against you own negligence - e.g. faulty brakes, failure to supervise, etc. This would be a lot more expensive.

Insurance brokers can be useful in such situations, but I would not be relying on them for legal advice. However, sometimes there is an insurance company which specialises in this type of narrow area, and they might well know the legal liability well.

As part of your market research, you should probably go on a few tours in the UK with different companies and then ask them what their liability and insurance situation is. Their legal system is fairly similar to ours.