Ben's air crash analogy is a good one:

 "If this were an air crash investigation, the 'root cause' would be 'the insufficient distance between the boats'.  Dropping the mainsheet is an 'active failure' and the wind strength is a 'contributing factor'. "

I differ slightly from Ben in that I do not need a rules change or an interpretation to reach a conclusion.
If the boats were J24s , and the mast of the leeward boat touched the mast of a windward boat while they were both going upwind in 15 knots, we can confidently find that W was not keeping clear of L throughout the overtake.  W cannot be exonerated from the breach of Rule 11.

Philosophically the discussion can then center around whether an "active failure" triggers Rule 14. 
Specifically:  If reasonably possible, a boat shall.... (b) not cause contact between boats,

It is an interesting topic to delve into under two headings:
1. Unintentional human error is the "active failure"
2. Boat or equipment failure is the "active failure"

Unintentional Human Error

Case 30 ruled that
"After gybing, A became the keep-clear boat under rule 10, even though she had not intended to gybe....A did not break rule 14(a) because it was not ‘reasonably possible’ for her to avoid contact."
However IMO, Case 30 does not establish clear precedent because the PC also found that B's actions contributed to the unintentional gybe. But its useful.

Case 77 looked at a situation where A made an unintentional error during their spinnaker dowse, and the chute was trailing 20 foot astern and touched B the boat behind them. B was exonerated from rule 12 AND The case rules that  "A broke rule 14(a) by causing contact that she could have avoided."

Case 91 distinguished a similar situation from Case 77 by ruling that A's out of control chute had been out of control for long enough that B should have anticipated it and avoided the chute. B was disqualified for Rule 12. That is a fair distinction.  However the Appeals committee complicated our understanding of rule 14 by ruling that "A did not break rule 14 because, after it became clear that B was not keeping clear, it was not reasonably possible for her to avoid the contact."

So in 77, the Appeals committee rule that the human error of losing control of a spinnaker is an active failure that "could have been avoided" and in Case 91, a very similar error was "not reasonable possible..to avoid"

Food for an interesting discussion

Equipment Failure

I think that if a ROW boat cannot avoid a KC boat due to unintended equipment failure then it would likely be deemed NOT reasonably possible to avoid contact , but I havent found many cases to support that conclusion.

The closest I found is Case 99 which suggests that in a case when the ROW boat does not avoid contact because they anticipate that the action of avoiding contact would cause equipment failure, then Rule 14 has not been broken:
 " The only action available to S was to crash-gybe, which risked considerable damage to S. That finding was equivalent to a finding that it was not reasonably possible for S to avoid contact. Therefore, S did not break rule 14."

Set TWD (mag)
Leg#  Mrk1 Mrk2 Bearing TWA(p/s)  Dist

That could easily fit width wise on a phone. 

When setting the marks, if they are govt marks hyperlinking to details regards bells/flash height etc .. avail as a pop-up will keep the list clean. 

Richard, thank you for your open minded response, but i agree with Sue that relaxing the promptness of the hail and RRS 44 penalty requirements would be undesirable.

One of the purposes of the suggestion was to reinforce the requirements for prompt hail and prompt response.

If you let go of those requirements you will get into all sorts of disputes about:

AIUI the purpose of making the respondent (not a word in this RRS) field mandatory is that the system automatically messages that entity that they are the subject of a hearing.  Naming a boat there will make it appear that that boat has been protested.

Wouldn't a better solution for requests fo  redress be to either omit the respondent field or make it non mandatory, and message the race committee that a request has been received in every case?

Thank you for everything that you do.