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SAFETY RULES AND CIVIL LIABILITY IN THE
PRATICE OF MOUNTAIN BIKING AND DOWNHILL
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to examine the rules of safety and liability emerging
from the practice of mountain biking and downhill. The number of
tourists praticing these two sports is greatly increasing in the Italian
mountais holiday destinations. This phenomena is progressiveley
becoming an important driver in the marketing strategies related to the
tourist fruition of the Italian mountains in summer. The analysis focuses
on the evolution of these spost activities and of the tourism choices
connected to these sports. It inquires the civil liabilities arising for the
parties that are involved in these activities both as service provider and
as consumers.
The study is divided into two parts. The first highlights the historical
evolution of the bicycle, from the early models without steering and
pedals up to the most advanced mountain bike today. It is later potrayed
the advent of the practice of mountain biking and downhill in Italy, in
order to understand the regulatory framework that articulates
procedures, conditions of practice and safety rules surrounding these
sport activities, with reference to legislation often uneven and dispersed
at various levels in the hierarchy of sources (with an important model
represented by recent Trentino legislation), where an important role is
played by the technical and social rules of the communities of practice
of reference.
The second part is about the civil liabilities affecting the subjects
involved in this activity as service providers and users. The paper
examines the figure of the guide/teacher of mountain bike, not yet
legislatively recognized as professions, but heterogeneously governed
by some regional rules, highlighting the civil liability imposed on these
figures of uncertain professional level in relation to accidents involving
pupils and of parties injured by them during the time in which they are
placed under the supervision of their instructors. It then considers the
liability of the operator of the bike park, an organized area specifically
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