The use of video evidence in the protest room is a common and controversial topic. There are still judges who refuse to consider video evidence in any circumstance. To me, this is just dead wrong. That said, there are indeed very real risks in using video evidence without carefully considering its limitations. Here is a great example; watch the Optis fly past the AC45s upwind!
Great video! There should be a link to it from the Judge's Manual.
ReplyDeleteHere's my take on video evidence: It's really great for timing but terrible for just about anything else. Last year, I served on a panel hearing a protest for rule 13, Tacking. The tacking boat claimed the other boat hadn't taken avoiding action until after the tacking boat finished her tack. We decided, based on all the evidence, that the tacking boat was wrong about this. Then a week later I watched a video of the incident on SailGroove, and there was no question the other boat turned to avoid the tacking boat way before the tack was complete. Of course, that still didn't show that there was a foul (distances are totally unreliable in videos) but at least it answered one point of contention.
My other anecdote is about a redress hearing for OCS. The RC had put a camera directly behind the flagstaff on the committee boat, just above the head of the PRO, who was calling the line (the pole was in the middle of the picture). There was good audio and so we could watch the boats approaching the line, watch one boat poke out, hear the countdown, watch the boat cross the line, hear more countdown, and then the gun. We actually never held a full hearing, but simply gave the sailor access to the video in advance. He withdrew his request for redress.
Unfortunately, the use of video favors boats and teams with supporting coaches, and therefore isn't all that fair. Another problem with video that comes up in college events is that there can be innumerable requests to reopen hearings based on new video evidence, as one (and then, possibly the other) party wanders around the parking lot looking for grounds to reopen the hearing. Generally, every coach has at least one video running on every race (sometimes more). Because of the unfairness to uncoached teams and the possibility of reopenings that go on for days, ICSA has banned the use of video entirely.
Rob-
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about this idea that if one team has a someone taking video and is involved in a protest with another team that doesn't have video, that that is somehow unfair.
Why does excluding certain evidence based on which party's coach took it make the hearing more fair? How does excluding information from a hearing improve the accuracy and fairness of the hearing?
Wait a minute. You don't see how allowing video taken by coaches favors teams with coaches? In a perfect world, perhaps a coach with video showing that his sailor was wrong would come forward with it, but alas, this is not a perfect world. I think it's safe to say that most coaches would suppress such evidence, and of course the protest committee does not have the right to compel the competitor to produce it -- assuming that they know it exists. So it's really not an issue of including evidence but one of suppressing it; and that's not anybody's standard for fairness.
ReplyDeleteDoes it favor teams with coaches? Perhaps, but the alternative is to accept worse protest outcomes (i.e., less likely to get the facts right) to avoid any advantage to teams with coaches.
ReplyDeleteThe protest committee's job is to do its best, using all available evidence, to get the facts right. If the jury adopts a policy of refusing to consider evidence based on who hired the person who took the video, it is far overstepping its duties. Likewise, to the extent organizers adopt rules banning video evidence for this reason, they are making a clear decision to accept worse protest outcomes. And to what end? Is there anyone who would hire a coach but for the fact that if that person is in an incident, and if the coach videos it, and if the video helps persuade the jury, such evidence would not be admissible?
Re: ICSA. I did a quick scan of the ICSA PRs but did not see nay rules prohibiting video evidence. I have not heard of such a rule. Do you know where it is listed and when it was implemented?
Whoops! Sorry about the misinformation. I've been umpiring and judging a lot of events lately, and some of them prohibited video evidence for the reasons I gave above. Many of those events were collegiate team race regattas, and I guess I assumed the prohibition was in the ICSA PRs. But I checked, too, and there's no such prohibition; nor in the Interscholastic PRs. Wonder where I saw it? Anyway, I apologize.
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