Car damage - can I claim against the council?

Car_54 wrote: »

By the OP's own account (post #7) he saw the flood water, but carried on regardless.

Which part of my post (if any) do you consider to be sarcastic?

I was thinking of post #6 (not yours).

I do agree that driving into flood water is foolish, it is not necessarily foolish to not recognise that it was flood water in the first place - which is the distinction obvious in the first post - the driver simply did not recognise that they were driving into a flood in the dark on what I am guessing was an unfamiliar road, and while there might have been clues, if someone is not considering the possibility that the road was deeply flooded, then they would not look for them. A few inches of snow does not suggest to me that flooding was inevitable as it thawed.

The reality I see is that on a daily basis, most drivers don't seem able to drive down a piece of motorway between two dotted lines, so expecting the typical driver to be using a good level of observation skills is expecting something that simply does not happen.

What is the level of competence that the insurers should expect? It is clearly somewhere less than as a reasonably competent driver considered in law, as they happily insure people driving to that standard all the time and pay out for complete incompetence on a daily basis.

It is entirely unsurprising that a driver can go down a road and be completely surprised by standing water, and certainly if there is no other flood water around simply not consider that the water might be so deep as to be impassible (or alternatively, be driving at a speed where stopping in time was not possible because they hadn't considered that there could be the equivalent of a brick wall across the road).

That is not to say that it was not careless or avoidable, but it is entirely understandable for people to do it. People drive through puddles on the road day in and day out without any consideration to what might be hidden.

As others have said, it would be interesting to have the location to understand what it was about the location that caused it to flood and it would also be interesting to know if this was an isolated incidence, so the driver would not have had it on their radar to consider.

I would expect that the insurers would have to show deliberate negligence - the deliberate driving through an obviously flooded road - to avoid paying out. I would expect insurers to pay out for the drivers who overtake me on my cycle on a blind bend every day even though it is deliberately negligent driving, so I cannot see that this would be any different, and I would expect the insurance ombudsman to take a similar view.

AdrianC wrote: »

The Ryanair of insurers...


Now substitute "flood"/"flood water" for "tree".

Don't you mean 'substitute "tree" for "flood"/"flood water"?

AdrianC wrote: »

Or "with "tree""

YKWIM...

IKWYM, but it's not English, in spite of what football writers and commentators may think.

AdrianC wrote: »

You mean here? https://goo.gl/maps/apWAdwTSLn52

There's a rather unsubtle clue as to the dip there - just look at the way the pavement is level, and the retaining walls dip down. And that's without thinking "Oooh, I bet the road dips down to go under that railway line"

At 30mph, with a junction and a bend, you've got plenty of time to twig that.

Now you imagine it is dark, and it is flooded to the level just below the railings. You have not driven that road before. What would you see?

Railway bridges are classic places for people getting "surprised". A thinking driver would probably be suspicious simply by being familiar that roads often dive under bridges, but a less thinking driver might look at the railings as a clue that the road was level and decide that as the first few feet were ok that they could get through. The surface and surrounds give no clue as to the depth (hence why you should not enter just because it looks ok).

I'm sure a lot of "dramatic" flooded car footage in urban environments on the news is filmed around bridges.