I dare say everyone in the UK is familiar with this problem – pavements that after a big snow fall end up coated in a thin (or thick) sheet of white ice. It varies in slipperiness from “quite” to “you’re going down”, and is very tiring to walk on because of the strain of making sure you have a good grip before taking the next step.
Apparently in the dim and distant past – before the winter of 1962/1963 (which was a biggie if anyone is wondering), it was common for everyone to clear the pavement in front of their house. Now there’s still a few who do it today, or at least there are a few who eventually get around to it after a few days – suggestion: if you’re going to clear your pavement, do it early before it ends up as ice, it will be a lot easier!
But the vast majority of pavements do not get any kind of treatment until the council gets around to them. We could be all pathetic and whinge about how the council is not doing its job properly and do nothing else. Or we could do something sensible – like clear our pavements ourselves.
But what about all those dire warnings that clearing your pavement could make you liable for being sued when someone takes a tumble ? It is rumoured that this is why people stopped clearing their pavements after 1962/1963, after someone did sue. Well it’s a load of rancid rhinoceros dung :-
- BBC News (the journalist says “possibly”; the solicitor says “It would be quite difficult to prove and quite difficult to proceed with a claim.”
There’s plenty of other articles out there saying that you might be sued for clearing the pavement outside your home; but you can be sued for popping out of the house and accidentally knocking over someone in your rush. The fault is not with the law (or with clearing pavements), but with morons who sue at the drop of a hat and at the sniff of a lucrative payout.
We could do with a law saying that those responsible for falls on icy pavements are a) the person who fell (whatever happened to personal responsibility anyway?) and b) the weather (or if you want a person to blame, start believing in one of those god people).
In the absence of such a law it is worth remembering that :-
- You are exceptionally unlikely to be sued.
- You can always counter-sue the moron for being an anti-social moron (well you can try).
- You could always clear half of the pavement so people have a choice of whether to use an untreated surface or a treated surface.
- You could always have a lottery for your street so you get to clear the pavement in front of a random house, and destroy the results afterwards. When the householder is sued they can legitimately claim “it wasn’t me wot done it”, and if you destroy the results of the lottery, and carefully forget who did what, the “culprit” won’t be found. Incidentally this also solves the problem of those who can’t or won’t help – those who volunteer get two or three houses to do, and the whole street gets cleared.
Going back a bit, the responsibility for falling rests with the person who slips and falls. It may be harsh, but so is life. It is perfectly possible to arrange for adequate footwear (and straight after this blog is posted, I’ll be buying online something equivalent to crampons). Blaming someone else for your tumble is the sort of behaviour that should bring howls of derision and a few rotten vegetables.
Similarly blaming “the council” for not sorting out the pavements is a little unfair – whilst the council may grit pavements when it is convenient for them to do so, their main responsibility is to ensure that food can get to the shops. In unusually harsh weather (which we have had just now), the council simply isn’t going to be able to get around to the “nice to haves”.
Part of the problem is the possibility of legal liability which the media does it’s unfortunate best to promote – not intentionally perhaps. But by mentioning it whenever the subject of clearing pavements comes up. Usually in a context that on the surface allows for the possibility that liability is ridiculous, but with an undercurrent that re-enforced the myth that clearing pavements could lead to legal trouble.
Is it too much to ask that the media leave this subject alone as much as possible ?
And lastly, lets ignore the possibility of being sued and just clear the pavements.