The amounts are detailed in the Blue Book. ( I don't have mine with me at the moment but in a previous thread it was worked out to be about £10, depending on the class of the meeting. Let's go with Alan's £8.50)
So why does the story that the MSA costs clubs so much persist?
In part it is because there are significant fees for track inspection and licensing each year and because the MSA details the levels of safety and manning necessary for a meeting to be run.
This is a problem, because some tracks run crowded practice days (think pre race Saturday) with a limited number of marshals without incident, so there's an assumption that one could run a race day with the same level of manning, or without an ambulance on site (or two ambulances if there's more than 100 competitors ).
Some tracks run IKR events with limited marshalling or with restricted medical cover, and the organisers are then able to charge much less for the entry fee.
While one might consider this a good thing, consider the recent rugby player who lay on the ground for hours waiting for an ambulance to arrive, while the hospital was only 3 miles from the gates of the club. Would you want to lie on a kart track for five hours, possibly with a head injury and missing the 'golden hour', the period immediately after an incident when proper treatment has a big effect on survival or recovery rates? Would you want untrained or unqualified staff to move you off the track so that karting could resume?
Of course, there are other costs attendant to the MSA. For example, there is the judicial system, necessary because some people take their karting very seriously. Again in IKR the regulations can state that competitors will accept possibly arbitrary and incorrect decisions by the officials without any possibility of argument. (Something else that might change when people start IKR-ing to win, rather than have a good time.) Meanwhile, the MSA have to find some way of paying for the time and expertise of those who arbitrate in their system, neither the fees nor the penalties in any way recover the true costs.
Yes, one might consider that the licence system is expensive, when a track can 'see' whether an driver is competent, but experience has shown that drivers who have been banned for dangerous driving have gone to extreme lengths to turn up at events when they have been banned.
Would you want to have a system where a driver banned at one track for dangerous behaviour can simply go to another track and select you for his next victim?
The medical is possibly necessary, though anecdotally no-one has ever died or been prevented from dying as a result of the medical. (on the other hand I know of several who have had conditions, like high blood pressure, detected and been treated.) The real cost of the medical however is not an MSA problem but the practice of doctors.
Though I am at a loss why I can fly a plane without a medical, drive a car without a medical, play a variety of high stress and vigorous sports without a medical, even drive a kart as fast in practice without a medical.....but presumably someone did a risk analysis before demanding medicals or is it merely PR?
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MSA raceday fee's by 'Bucky' (22 Jan 2015 @ 15:50)
