Damage to Alloy Wheel in Council Car park - Can I claim for the damage?

timbotambo

On Friday I badly damaged one of my alloy wheels in a City Council Car Park.

The car park is a multi-storey and on each level there are a very small number of bays (car park was full - only space left grrrr) which have a 6" high metal duct running along the entire side length of the bay in parallel. This makes the bay so small that it is actually not possible to get a car in (Volvo V70 estate) the bay without retracting the wing mirrors to avoid the car park pillar on the other side. Image here:

http://i59.tinypic.com/4ht8n6.jpg

When I pulled out of the space I swung out as wide as is possible but my right rear wheel juuuuuust caught the end of the duct and cause quite a lot of damage including taking a small chunk out and a large surface scratch.

Do you think I could claim the cost of this damage against the council? The Government standard for a parking bay is 240cm, this bay when I measured this space it is 206cm wide at the narrowest point and there are no signs to warn. According to Google, my car (wheel to wheel) is 186cm and wing mirror to wing mirror is 217cm. So I only had a few cm clearance. If so, any suggestions how I go about claiming?

pulliptears

Thats a bloody terrible design, but, I'm reasonably sure you wont get anywhere with a claim as you hit it.

You know the width of your car and should judge the width of the space, sadly you chose to park in it rather than leave the car park and go elsewhere.

Alter_ego

No claim in my opinion. You did the damage yourself after all.

TBagpuss

I can't see how you could have a claim. You misjudged while parking in a space which was not really large enough for your vehicle. That is not the council's fault.

If you were not sure whether you could get in you could have chosen not to park, and in addition there would probably be an argument that you should have been going slowly and making good observations as you drove that you would have seen that you did not have clearance in time to stop before doing any damage.

societys_child

The "6" high metal duct" is a stationary object, it's not the councils fault you scraped it. If you damaged it, the council could bill you.

shaun_from_Africa

timbotambo wrote: »

The Government standard for a parking bay is 240cm, this bay when I measured this space it is 206cm wide at the narrowest point and there are no signs to warn.?

There is one very important word missing from your statement above.

The term ‘one space’ used in the standards refers to standing area only and the recommended minimum dimensions for a car space are 4.8 metres by 2.4 metres

http://www.planningni.gov.uk/downloads/parking-standards.pdf

Having a parking bay that is only 2.06 metres wide is not illegal, it simply means that the designers decided not to follow the government's recommendations.

BeenThroughItAll

Absolutely no chance, and rightly so.

Why should every other poor sod's Council Tax bill go up because you can't judge the width of your car properly, or were so desperate to park in that particular car park you risked parking in a space you knew was too small for your car?

straighttalker

Why are you trying to sue the council for the effects of your own negligent driving?

InsideInsurance

Agree with all the others, you saw a static object and you hit it. Your fault.

Councils do have a heightened duty of care but even that only goes so far. The only case I know where a council's static object was ever in any way found responsible was when they cut back the pavement to widen the road but left a single lamppost 2' into the road. Even in that case it was still an 80/20 split against the motorist and only due to gross breach of the duty of care of leaving a lamppost in the middle of the road was a 20% held against them

dacouch

I was expecting it to be the "Owner of a merc"...

BeenThroughItAll

GingerBob wrote: »

Yes, quite right. Your local council (that's your "ars**ole local council", to use the correct terminology) needs all the money it can pilfer off the council tax payers to p**s up against the wall on its grandiose, scumbag schemes.

Blimey, life must present one hell of a challenge for you, what with the size of that chip on your shoulder.