Help on incident with person's gates & my car

wildonewinch

Please help
I am a private caterer and last month upon leaving my clients house,  at 10pm, he followed my car to the gates of his house,  to open with a hand held remote control.  As I sat before the gates and saying goodbye to the client, the gates were already open.as I said goodbye I proceeded forward,  not being told that gates have time limit or sensor... as going through the gates they started closing on me , in which they hit my ns read passenger door,  forcefully jolting my car .
This created considerable damage to my car.  However the client insists I drove into the gates.  Cctv clearly shows gates shutting on my car . He now wants my car insurance company to pay £8k for damage.  My insurance company arw useless and saying I should have been more aware?! And I'm at fault???  Because i should of known they would close on me?Bare in mind the client had consumed a few wines with his supper and o have passenger agreeing with what actually happened.  

DullGreyGuy

How wide are the gates compared to the vehicle? Your talking private catering and private electric gates so imagining something fairly palatial but could be a much tighter squeeze so would go from open to hitting the car quicker than I'm imagining. 

You have CCTV footage? Would you be willing to put it to YouTube or such so can see? Obvs just need the bit from when the gates start to close to the collision, dont need the whole footage etc.  Dont post it if you can see peoples faces etc or if you dont want to.

When did you notice the gates were starting to close? What did you do in response? Was the gates hitting you the first time you realised there was a problem?

Mildly_Miffed

Automatic gates that close even when there's something in the way are NOT good at all, positively dangerous.

Even if they started to close, then you moved forward into their path, they should have re-opened when they detected your car.

Lean harder on your insurer.

Do you have a copy of the video?

mr_stripey

The gates should definitely have a mechanism to prevent this. I worked in gate automation 25 years ago and everything we did even then had safety sensors to prevent closing on something, or someone.

wildonewinch

I only noticed gates closing the split second before they hit me , in my ns wing mirror.  To the basic eye it looks like I hit it front end on, however,  if you analyse closely, upon impact my headlights aren't shining on gates , they have already passed through,  which is compatible with the damage to my car 
Oh file format not allowed ( can't attach footage)

wildonewinch

mr_stripey said:

The gates should definitely have a mechanism to prevent this. I worked in gate automation 25 years ago and everything we did even then had safety sensors to prevent closing on something, or someone.

Exactly! Which it seems they didn't,  I have never come across gates that have to be manually remote controlled in situ

mr_stripey

wildonewinch said:

mr_stripey said:

The gates should definitely have a mechanism to prevent this. I worked in gate automation 25 years ago and everything we did even then had safety sensors to prevent closing on something, or someone.

Exactly! Which it seems they didn't,  I have never come across gates that have to be manually remote controlled in situ

well configurations vary I guess. Majority of systems we installed were "free exit". Thus, access into the property would be controlled by keyfob or intercom but exiting property would be "automatic" - gates would open as you drove up to them.

I'm sure the technology has changed these days but all systems should be set up not to close if the gateway is not clear.

DullGreyGuy

Mildly_Miffed said:

Automatic gates that close even when there's something in the way are NOT good at all, positively dangerous.

Even if they started to close, then you moved forward into their path, they should have re-opened when they detected your car.

Never had my own private gates but have lived in gated complexes with them or underground carparks. Normally the sensor is virtually inline with the gate posts so for something relatively thin, like a person, it would have to be near the gate posts to be caught by the gates if centered and yes it will stop them hitting them but something wide like a car or for a person thats off centre they can be too far from the sensor to be seen. 

Our unground carpark is the same now, if you stand right in front of the edge of the gate whilst they're open they will attempt to close but detect the collision and reopen. Given how slow they close it would be hard to be considered dangerous. 

wildonewinch said:

I only noticed gates closing the split second before they hit me , in my ns wing mirror.  To the basic eye it looks like I hit it front end on, however,  if you analyse closely, upon impact my headlights aren't shining on gates , they have already passed through,  which is compatible with the damage to my car 
Oh file format not allowed ( can't attach footage)

You wouldn't be able to put the video here directly but if you uploaded it to YouTube or similar you could then link to that here instead.


As I haven't dealt with motor claims in years I dont have access to the database on caselaw that I once had and cannot remember off the top of my head any cases involving powered gates that I dealt with. Generally being a static object you're not going to be liable even if you shouldn't be where you were but there are exceptions, most extreme being people leaving cars on level crossings. 


So I'm going to not opine on what the right liability decision but instead suggest that you speak to the claims department again, in principle to find out which technical team its been allocated to and try to speak to someone there rather than the call centre guys who answer the general claims line. Claims teams can be structured in a number of ways, almost all have a FNOL (first notification of loss) team who are the lowest trained and the ones that answer the general phones. Many will have a Recoveries team for non-fault claims, and then two teams that deal with third parties in other cases either dependent on claim value (fast track or multi-track) or based on injury/non-injury cases. It's those back office teams you need to speak to but in some firms they are hard to get hold of as they see themselves above call centre staff. 

wildonewinch

I'm trying to share the cctv via YouTube on here , which is utter nightmare for technophobe,   I have shared the footage of incident with friends,  it does look like I hit it front end on,  but if you study it clearly you see it hits side on

eskbanker

As a new poster, you won't be allowed to post links on here, but this can be circumvented by editing the link with judicious use of additional space characters or the like.

MattMattMattUK

wildonewinch said:

I'm trying to share the cctv via YouTube on here , which is utter nightmare for technophobe,   I have shared the footage of incident with friends,  it does look like I hit it front end on,  but if you study it clearly you see it hits side on

You do not need to share it on here, you share it with your insurance company and let them deal with it.