Ask insurance companies to pay for the grit.
If they are minded to pay for minor repairs for people's windscreens for avoidance of the big event of unrecoverable windscreens, surely the same diligence could pay dividends in the avoidance of even bigger events of mashed up cars and people?
I wonder if DIY gritting might attract compensation claims from anyone who skidded on the patch "inexpertly" gritted. C.f. the great debate about clearing the pavement outside your house which no one around here does nowadays -- maybe the same fear provides an excuse for laziness.
Chris
The problem is, how much extra? Collating information from various web sites, it seems that one gritting lorry can grit about 25-30 miles of road in a night. How many lorries and crews would be required to treat all the roads down to the priority level of your road? They would have to do them all, not just yours.
We don't train our Police to deal with winter weather. I've done the course the Austrain emergency services get sent on. Anyone doing that ends up knowing a lot about how to keep control on icy roads; the most important lesson being to drive much more slowly than you expect.
As someone else has suggested, the LA might be willing to supply bin and grit. The main objection to doing so is if it is likely to be used as a litter bin by passers-by.
There are two problems with that. First, if one stretch of road is gritted, people may not be expecting ice when they leave that bit, particularly if it is black ice. Second, the gritting lorries can only get to those spots by gritting all the roads they need to use to reach them.
In many areas, it is the only solution you are likely to get.
Only when there is no ice covering it.
Colin Bignell
And even then if you are on smooth ice there is not a lot you can do if the car decides it wants to slide down the hill, famous YouTube clip:
But at 40 x 25KG Bags fr.£155.65 +vat what is that compared to the services that they think they should give, i.e. outreach workers, chief execs that are over paid and therefore over pensioned. The list of services that we want/need if far out weighed by the services *they* think they should provide. It is time we fought back and pruned the councils.
Dave
Well I should have my CCTV footage of a few cars outside my house on Sunday afternoon just siding in the snow up on YouTube soon. No accidents, just a total lack of grip and no one was going fast.
I parked my car up and left it until the roads were safer.
Adam
If you were driving, then it is down to your training on snow and ice. I live on a road that branches right and left until it gets to the bottom, after a very gentle slope, where it splits both ways. I was going for my lunchtime pint earlier in the week, when I heard an engine revving at between 3000 to 4000 RPM. I kid you not. I thought that is was an excessive way to warm up an engine, until I came to the part of the road that joins us all. His front driving wheels were spinning too fast to see his mag alloy wheel spokes and he had someone pushing him up this slight slope. Had he used first gear at a tick over, he would have driven up the slope without once spinning a wheel. I live one road away from open country lanes and I don't have a problem with driving on them, until the idiot driver comes along and polishes the snow by spinning his wheels.
snip
Only of any use when it is not coated with polished snow and/or ice.
Dave
So do many other communities - what's so special about yours?
You are aware of the problem - so drive according to the road conditions.
Are you prepared to pay the extra council tax to allow this?
Should be interesting - or some crap as to why others should do the work.
Will generally be ignored by the council - they're more than used to this shit!
Why should they wriggle, they cannot keep a permanent crew there? You live there, so help out rather than moaning about it.
Will be ignored - and if a fatality happens and its proven that the fault was not theirs, what happens then?
They are probably aware of the danger spots - as you are.
If you don't already know that, they do your own research - why should your nose be wiped for you?
Why cannot the road users take some responsibilty and use common sense - or grit the road themselves from council installed and maintained grit-bins - as we do in our little community?
Your post smacks of someone who wants their arses and noses wiped by someone else rather than doing it yourself - or if something goes wrong, pass the buck rather than accept responsibility for their own errors or omissions.
Please be aware that given financial and manpower restraints, it's impossible for any council to be able to grit every last road in its area - now get of that fat arse, grab a shovel and have a go, just like we do in these conditions on around half a mile or so of hill using the grit out of the bins that are council supplied and maintained (6 of them)! Yes, and they even refill them regularly in this weather AND replace them when they get damaged (as they have done when the odd vehicle has made close contact of the third kind with them).
"Unbeliever" wibbled on Wednesday 23 December 2009 18:52
As far as I am concerned, I do pay Council Tax with the expectation of gritting side roads. The council where I grew up in Surrey 30 years ago managed a damn sight more gritting than T Wells is bothering to do now.
I'm not complaining specifically about then not gritting my bit of road - have plenty of ash and sand of my own to chuck on that. I do however think it is a wholesale dereliction of their duty to do as little as I have observed these last few days.
Do you suggest that I carry a bootfull of grit so I can deal with every road I need to use? Because other people sure as hell won't reliably do their bits. That's why we delegate these tasks to public bodies.
By your logic, the council shouldn't do anything. We should all carry a bag of MOT, a bag of cold lay tarmac and a shovel and fix the ruddy road as we go.
OTOH, if that's to be the case, I'd like my couple of grand back that I pay on council tax then I would mind less.
Now perhaps if we got shot of all the nanny state regulation WRT building control, all the politically correct bollocks and councils stopped wasting money on nonsense, there might be enough money in the pot to grit the roads.
The anti skid coatings are pourous, they can't be allowed to freeze, or they are ruined. Gritting is a priority where it is installed. This is what I was told by a friend who is a road engineer and was responsible for gritting in his last job.
Somewhere near here the health authority was paying the council to grit more roads. Preventative therapy they called it -- less people in casualty.
fewer
Piers Finlayson has brought this to us :
Dave formulated the question :
I'll drink to that!
How about you just remind everybody what the local authority's statutory duty is, before you recommend members of the public put their hand in there own pockets?
We still do still clear and grit, as do several neighbours.
snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net formulated the question :
They used to grit our road and all of the pavements. Now they spend considerably more money not so much snow and ice as there used to be - the road take a couple of days before it is gritted and the pavements never, even in the village high street.
It is suprising what you can do with training and practice. The course involved things like an emergency stop, on ice, in a tight bend and recovering from an induced spin before hitting water jets, which simulated obstacles like those cars. The problem is, you do need the training to be able to keep the car under control and thus avoid the results in the video.
Colin Bignell
Harry Bloomfield wibbled on Wednesday 23 December 2009 20:28
Now that you mention it - yes I remember them gritting the pavements.
Yes, they have definitely turned into a waste of space these days.
Harry Bloomfield wibbled on Wednesday 23 December 2009 20:23
I don't allow myself to think like that.
If anyone wants to sue, perhaps they should sue the councils for their wilful neglect when they have an accident on an ungritted road.
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