A two-year-old European Union high court ruling became the center of controversy in the United Kingdom last month after racers there raised an alarm that the ruling’s unintended consequences could decimate motorsports there and across Europe.

Lambasted for potentially requiring owners and operators of every motorized vehicle from mobility scooters to bumper cars to race cars to obtain liability insurance for their vehicles, the European Court of Justice’s September 2014 ruling in the case of Vnuk v. Triglav (in which a farm worker, injured from a fall off a ladder caused by a tractor, initially found he could not collect an insurance payout from the tractor’s motor vehicle policy) found that the EU’s 2009 Motor Insurance Directive did not clearly distinguish between on-road and off-road use (partly as a result of inadequate translations) and therefore, any motor vehicle – regardless of its use on public or private property – must be insured.

The issue came to light last month after the UK’s Department for Transport initiated a process for merging the Vnuk ruling into UK law. That, in turn, set off a number of condemnations of the Vnuk ruling, including a widely distributed press release from the Motorcycle Industry Association and the Motorsport Industry Association, a petition asking the UK government to refuse to implement the ruling, and criticism from a number of UK officials.

Looks like ALL vehicles, even racecars, will need to be insured going forward.