New Zealand strict no sue Laws

If you read my March 13th blog, you know I’ve led an adventurous life which I often share with my characters in my books. In Public Secrets, Carla goes down a 23’ waterfall and lands right-side up. When I took the waterfall in real life, they said there was a 20% chance of landing well.

  

Sounds dangerous, right? What if I had fallen out and broken my neck in the fall? Could my relatives sue somebody?

NO.

The government has a written document you must sign to take part in all their fun events. It’s not written in legalese. It’s very clear. If you die partaking in an extreme sports event no one can sue the operator of said event nor the New Zealand government which oversees the proper operation of the events even if they did something that inadvertently results in your death.

You sign all rights of suing away when you sign the document. If you don't sign the document, you'll have a very dull vacation.

Turns out Death isn’t a vague once in a while occurrence.

People really do die. The day I arrived on the southern Island, three people died and another nearly drowned. One got blown off the Routeburn track, (I almost went off at the exact same spot when I got hit by an intense wind.) 

A grandmother died when a road on the side of a mountain gave way. The grandmother had ridden up to watch her granddaughter bungee jump. So surely her relatives can sue!

Nope.  The road had signs declaring it was unsafe and warned peeps not to use it. So technically, they were all participating in an extreme event by driving up the dangerous road.

A rafter died on white water trip, which I took a few days later. I know exactly where the fellow died. A turn in the river caused a massive wave of water to hit the canyon wall and roll upwards, then roll over hitting the raft like a twelve-foot-wide sledgehammer, knocking many in the raft out of it. Unfortunately, the guy was literally knocked unconcious and he drowned. Here's a pic of my trip right before the giant wave slams into us. As you can see an unconscious body could easily be lost in these rapids.

Then a little Japanese guy had hired a guide to take him hang gliding. The hang glider can hold two people. The guide should be buckled in below so he can control the hang glider while the tourist is clicked higher so he can't mess with the steering mechanism.

So you have some idea what this looks like, here is a picture of me and my instructor. I am below flying the hang-glider and my instructor is slightly above me, but close enough to take over if I freeze (which I didn't).

I was there learning how to hang-glide, but with silly tourists, they click them much higher than my instructor so they can't touch anything and the guide would be where I am (with hands on the bar).  

Unfortunately, the guide forgot to click himself in, so the second he pushed off the mountain, he fell onto the rocks, while the little Japanese man floated off with the hang glider. The man could not reach the bar, so he couldn't steer the hang glider. Instead, he just closed his eyes. A standard paid trip lasts less than a half-hour, but the hang glider remained in the air for four hours! 

The man was very lucky. The glider could have crashed into the mountain, hit a tree, snagged electrical wires. Instead, it landed in a lake. Still, had the hang glider not come down nose first, then flipped upside down when the nose tip snagged the water, he might have drowned before the scuba rescue divers got to him. Fortunately, when it flipped it allowed the rescuers easy access to the man so they could unclip him before the hang glider sank and pulled him to the bottom of the very deep lake.

What type of events can you do in NZ once you sign your life away?

Hang-gliding, bungee jumping off bridges, death-defying crazy helicopter rides, white-water rafting, high-speed boating that could so easily end up in a fiery death as you zip through huge rocks just inches from the sides of the boat. And of course, you can go down a 23-foot waterfall, glacier walks, volcano tours, swimming with two hundred dolphins, and black water cave rafting.  And then there's a great many winter sports which rank high in the serious accident category.

For an adrenaline junkie, I highly recommend New Zealand. But seriously recognize when they say it is dangerous and hand you that waiver, they aren't kidding. You cannot sue ANYONE when participating in these extreme sports. 

If the extreme sport-shops had to buy insurance to cover themselves via normal insurance markets it would be unaffordable. Thus, the New Zealand government stepped up as their insurer, by writing a required waiver which tourists must sign to participate. This allows their plethora of small businesses to flourish as people sign their waivers so they may experience adventures of a lifetime. 

And while some of you might avoid my events, it's possible you'd like to ride on a boat and watch pods of 300 dolphins swim about your boat. To even do that, you'll have to sign the waiver, because a whale might come up and tip your boat over.  Or the captain could forget to fuel up before heading off and his radio doesn't work. Doesn't matter. You signed the waiver!

Does that mean these businesses aren't held accountable when they screw up? Not at all. The government can refuse any of the businesses a license to operate if they deem it unreliable or reckless. For example, Helicopter bungee jumping, using a two thousand foot bungee rope, was a hot new business, until someone realized that the people walking on the ground would be endangered if the bungee cord broke, and they HAD NOT signed a waiver. So all Helicopter bungee jumping businesses were immediately shut down.

I was there when they shut them down, and the tourist trade was not happy at all. In fact, they were most outraged. There had been over 2000 jumps with no injuries. Why were they shut down? People were coming from all over the world to bungee jump out of a helicopter.

In 2015, New Zealand tourist business was nearly $30 billion, that's 81.6 million a day. 

While only 29 people have died from extreme sports in over a five year time frame, lots of people do get hurt. 540 people were seriously injured in the same five years. But if you are hurt, they will try to make you better. You just can't sue. 

However, there are cases where the courts have fined businesses (usually less than $100k) or persons have been brought up on manslaughter charges for acting grievously outside of acceptable practices which resulted in the death of a person. But rarely are they found guilty.

AMAZON

Blurb

With a new identity, Amanda believes she has left her past behind. Then she acquires a stalker. She contacts the FBI and in doing so alerts a program she once created to her location. Now ensconced in the internet, the program is safe from harm, smarter than ever, and sentient. Presenting itself on her phone as a handsome face with a sexy British accent, “Adam” ingratiates himself into Amanda’s life. To ensure her safety and happiness, the sentient program proves there is absolutely nothing he can’t and won’t do.

The Adventures of a Crazy Woman

I am an adventurous and generous author.

Whatever I do, at least one of my characters will get to do.

Sometimes more than one gets to do it.

In Book 1 of my Artificial Intelligence series

Carla goes down a 23 foot waterfall in New Zealand.

Here's me going down that waterfall.

Yep, that's pretty much STRAIGHT down. When I traversed it, they said only 20% landed upright. The websites now claim 50%. I have to wonder if the guides have gotten better or if they bumped the percentage so more would take the trip.

Liza above

I'll admit, I don't think I would have enjoyed it half as much had I tumbled out like a lost sock in the washing machine. As it was, upon escaping the washing machine I, like everyone else, am a bit dazed.  

And if you are curious as to how I have pics. There's a guy on the cliff taking pictures. I think they cost me $20 but since it was the only 23 foot waterfall in the world that you could legally go down and expect to live, I had to have pictures. 

In a great deal of my books I raft. I love white water rafting...or normally I do. The river below was no fun at all!

Liza.>

I know, you are probably thinking that looks better than going down a waterfall. Well, about a second later we come to a bend in the river and the water rolls up the cliff wall then falls down on the raft knocking everyone three feet to the right. This meant I remained in the boat, but the peeps on the right got washed out. Which is how a tourist had died a few days before. We, however, recovered our peeps and no one died. Once we got around the bend the river widened and it was a big yawn. But I have to admit, that's a beautiful pic. I'm front left. My other issue is that we had zero control of the raft. There's hardly an oar that is touching water! We have zero, zip, nada control of our boat. 

When I was in Tasmania, I spent 7 days on the river with a bunch of guys. They were baffled by my presence. Why would a girl want to take a class four river raft? I loved when we had to do precise movements. Skill actually meant something on the Franklin river. I was excellent at left overs.  (That means upon command by our excellent guide, I would throw myself from my seat on the right, landing on the left side just in front of my left partner, who would slid back a bit. This enabled the raft to lift on the right side so we could slide through narrow passes between the large boulders. I did this so well, that my guide almost always called out left overs. We rarely did a right over. 

However, there were parts of the river that given the current water heights were simply unsafe to traverse, and so he'd make us do something I felt was even more unsafe.

 That was climbing on the side of the cliff and dragging our rafts with us. The picture is a bit tilted, but I was very worried I wasn't going to survive this section. I was so relieved when we got back in the raft. Climbing on two-inch ledges with rubber water shoes is NOT SAFE.

Still, this is a river you seriously have to work as a team and listen to your guide. I loved it until the last day when our journey ended here. Our way out was up a freaking waterfall.

Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as it looks. About twenty feet up that nonsense there was a 'trail' with a sign that said. "Warning. Trail is steep and dangerous. Use only in an emergency."

When I look at this for some reason it reminds me of bigfoot images. That's me leading the guys for like five seconds. Then they climbed over me, because I got stuck. One of them stepped on my shoulder to continue his climb.
The guide said we had to make two climbs to retrieve everything and bring the raft up. I hadn't climbed more than 300 feet before I knew damn well I was NOT going back down this and climbing it again. My climb was so slow that all those hunky guys passed early on and then passed me again as the hurried down. The guide gave me the good news that I didn't have to go down a second time when he passed me on his second trip up. That was never going to happen, but I refrained from telling him that and just thanked him instead.

And yes, I've a book with the whole trip. Not sure I'll ever publish it, but a character had to do this. Poor thing. 

Lucky was the character who got to go hang-gliding. Now jumping off the cliff with a cute instructor attached is lots of fun. When we were on a moderate hill, lifting the not particularly light hang-glider, and running down the weedy, potholed hill, I was not a happy camper.

In fact, I seriously hurt my ankle, which is why I got to do mountain jumps.  And if not for those sheep who refused to move when we landed it would have been my finest memory. 

I'm sorry to say, I let my character crash into the hard sheep as well.  At least reindeer didn't graze on my landing site.

 Many of my characters fly planes, since I learned to do that.  I also white water and sea kayak, so my characters do that as well. 
And let's not forget diving for the great white shark.
Fabulous trip, only I appear to be shark repellant. Once I left, the sharks came to play, but Ian Gorden let me watch the film of all the fun those who remained had after I left. I let my characters do that as well. 
I checked youtube. Ian doesn't have the actual film he showed me posted. The problem was to save the cameraman in the cage, he had to do something that's not allowed.

And how did I get two weeks of shark time with a famous shark guy? I have no idea. I asked for a shark dive and this is what my fabulous trip arranger arranged. 

Since the sharks were refusing to come during my two week, Ian let us cave dive and it nearly killed me:

The water surges into this cave were intense, and once we went in, it was nearly impossible to get out. It was the only time I thought I might actually die. Evidently, some water was making it through to the other side, which meant the surge going out did not equal the power of the surge going in. Since I had no clue if a human could get through to the other side, I needed to return the way I came in. My partner and I were being pushed further into the cave tunnel with each surge. Once I had a sense of the time between surges I would swim to a rock closer to the opening and hold on for dear life during a powerful surge. Then after the surge, swim to another rock and do the same thing again. Eventually, me and my dive partner got out, fortunately before we ran out of air.

I've done other things as well, but I think that's enough sharing for today.

With a new identity, Amanda believes she has left her past behind. Then she acquires a stalker. She contacts the FBI and in doing so alerts a program she once created to her location. Now ensconced in the internet, the program is safe from harm, smarter than ever, and sentient. Presenting itself on her phone as a handsome face with a sexy British accent, “Adam” ingratiates himself into Amanda’s life. To ensure her safety and happiness, the sentient program proves there is absolutely nothing he can’t and won’t do.

AMAZON