I’m KB. The current protocol requires a meeting between the organisers reps, riders reps, team reps, uci reps and commissaires reps. Pretty much everyone involved has a vested interest in a particular decision. using an independent panel who assess the situation at the start of the day and determine that the race is safe to proceed would remove any competing interests. This is what is currently done for anti-doping, which was set up specifically because of worries about rider safety, and in other industries. It’s not “another entity” as it replaces the current meeting between stakeholders The EWP requires.
I might be missing something, but it'd seem the main difference is that the panel wouldn't be comprised of road cycling stakeholders delegates, right?
Who would those people be then? Someone would still need to pick them - would they just be a bunch of UCI sycophants? Perhaps a few weather experts assessing the situation remotely? I should think it'd be necessary for the panel members to be familiar with actual roads and road cycling, so that would somewhat reduce the pool; it'd also require daily meetings. It'd also make sense they'd be the ones deciding neutralizations/modifications during the race, so they'd need to be in situ.
At that point, aren't those people basically weather-only commissaires?
More importantly, while I understand the theoretical benefits of trying to move from a representation system where representatives are liable to defend the private and selfish interests of their group to independent trustees with full autonomy to deliberate in the "common interest", I'm not sure how in practice that mechanism would sort out the problematic scenarios like today: riders put pressure on the race director and he gives in. Because that's where the problem is, not in the other 99.9% of the stages.
Would the decision of the panel be definitive and incommutable? Could that be enforceable if you had riders and race direction both saying they won't ride?
I believe the trouble here is that whatever formal mechanism is in place, the riders + race direction will always have de facto veto power.
Imagine a scenario where the organizer and riders support cancelling part of the stage, the independent panel orders the race to go on as planned, and then a serious accident happens. There's no way those independent people on the panel will accept that sort of risk, even if it's just reputational. And I mean, the first time that happens, the system is abolished even if going forward with the race was the right decision.
So the problem will remain exactly the same. Lazy riders and a weak race direction will overrule that weather panel, just like they do with the current EWP panel.
If it is not working now, that is the perfect time to devise a method that does work
I'm very skeptical there's any method that works in the sense of tweaking regulations, adding a panel, removing a panel, and so on.
One of those issues where moral suasion and stakeholder pressure work better than formal institutional changes.
I don't think that is warranted. You can design the stages, you just have to be willing to set a reasonable standard for implementing alterations when the situations dictate. Sometimes it will be beyond anybody's control, that is just the cost of operating sports competitions.
That was my point: if you're not willing to accept the risk of stages needing modifications/neutralizations mid-race, as the person I responded seems to suggest, then you might as well not design stages as this one. If one wants to keep high elevation stages as part of routes, as everyone does, then that risk is impossible to evade.