"I've never seen anything like it": Cyclists hospitalised by loose gravel crash seek compensation from council

brooksby wrote:

Council thinks, "well, it won't affect a motor vehicle so let's leave it alone".

Let's hope the council ends up paying compensation and takes more care in future to avoid expensive payouts

Had anyone reported the loose gravel surface ?

I suspect the council would only pay out if they couldnt be bothered to defend against it, because the cost of defending the case would exceed the payout, not because they accepted any fault whatsoever.

As for the road itself,come to East Suffolk plenty of worse looking roads with loose surfaces than that, all the gravel and flints get washed out of the fields onto the roads when it rains heavily.

Awavey wrote:

Had anyone reported the loose gravel surface ?

I'd expect that the loose gravel should be treated differently to a pothole which would need reporting to the council. A pothole is damage to a known good surface, so a council wouldn't have a reason to go and fix it until it had been reported (assuming that councils do ever fix potholes). Putting gravel onto a road is creating a hazard and is typically accompanied by signs, so putting in place a dangerous, slippery surface without sufficient warnings is clearly negligent.

Id accept different councils might run things differently, but certainly in Suffolk we can report any highways issue to the county council via an online system, be that potholes, road defects, signs missing/broken, overhanging trees/bushes and loose gravel and they arent treated differently, they might not get fixed any quicker but its then logged on their system to deal with, and in a case like this theyd have a much harder time claiming it was a new unknown problem they didnt know about.

certainly when its surface dressing time of the year, and theyve done the quick bodge version assuming the traffic will sweep the road clear for them, which on some rural roads could take months, Ive reported loose road chippings as a hazard as have many others and theyve then had to send a road sweeper out to clear the debris.

My point is that the council (or sub-contracter) would have put the gravel there, so it's not an unknown problem as they specifically created it.

Maybe.  There's a run of gravel about five feet wide which goes from a farm gate to the road, on the cycle path alongside the A369 between Abbots Leigh and Pill.  It has a clear run through the middle about six inches wide where cyclists have worn a path clear.  Every few months it gets cleared off by council street cleaners, and then within a few days has reappeared.  My point: the gravel clearly gets carried off the field by farm vehicles. 

Was the gravel in the article maybe farm debris? (like mud or cowsh!t?)

From the description, it sounds like quite deep gravel, so unlikely to be farm debris.

I reported a mains water leak a while back and was pleased to see it had been marked out on Wednesday and a hole dug on Thursday. Finding out what water authority was more difficult than reporting it.

Also reported a fly tipped mattress that had been removed too. Fly tipping can be somewhat contagious.  Once there is something, it can become many things quite quickly.

Whenever I have reported a downed tree on the Basingstoke canal, the towpath will have been cleared that very day.

Awavey wrote:

surface dressing time of the year

Ah yes gravel Fairy season. I must admit I keep an eye for which roads they are intending to ruin, and try to choose different routes until it sorts itself. Obviously that doesn't work for the commute...

Awavey wrote:

Had anyone reported the loose gravel surface ?

As I recall, there are specific rules about surface dressing which mean that the loose stuff has to be swept up promptly so that it doesn't form deep drifts.  If they didn't do that, then they will almost certainly be liable.

eburtthebike wrote:

Awavey wrote:

Had anyone reported the loose gravel surface ?

As I recall, there are specific rules about surface dressing which mean that the loose stuff has to be swept up promptly so that it doesn't form deep drifts.  If they didn't do that, then they will almost certainly be liable.

I'd be interested to know the source of the gravel. If it is surface dressing there should have been warning signs in place, usually with a speed restriction. That's what they do in North Yorkshire and then think it's ok to leave it like that for as long as they like!

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<p>[quote=eburtthebike wrote:

Awavey wrote:

Had anyone reported the loose gravel surface ?

I'd be interested to know the source of the gravel.

I had a look on fixmystreet and there'd been no reports on that road. It could have been reported directly to the council though.

I don't think surface dressing is the issue here. The council have said work was due to be carried out, so not done yet. You can also see old pothole repair marks in the photos, which would have been covered up by the bitumen layer for surface dressing.

It's likely the gravel is just from the crumbling road surface. Possibly also debris washing down from the high mud bank to the side of the road. Looking a bit further up the road at some of the unsurfaced lay-bys, they seem to also have a lot of gravel in them. I doubt the council would have filled them with gravel, so it's possible the local soil has a high gravel content.

Well according to this soil map: http://www.landis.org.uk/soilscapes/
the geology of the area turns to sand for a short section where the incident occurred. So a combination of sand washed down onto the road from the bank and gravel from the soil/crumbling road surface, would be the likely culprit.

The soil type is the same as that found at Woburn Sands. I can confirm that is extremely loose and slippery when it encroaches onto the road.