We have had an incident where one of our delivery drivers, delivering to an industrial/rural complex has driven through a suspended insulated cable, snapping that cable and damaging the wall and fixings it was attached to. It is not RIDDOR reportable as the cable was insulated, but for a thought experiement, would it be us or the business owner that would have to report.

Secondly, the business owner is trying to get us to pay for repairs. it is only £160, but I am reluctant to authorise the payment since this was a cable suspended above an access route, with no controls to stop lorries hitting it beyond a hand made sign. There was no traffic management, and no signs with the correct route through the complex. I am actually a little horrified at the general lack of saftey awareness of this. Given the cable snapped it could have caused serious injuries from electrical issues, or the whiplash of the cable.

It is slightly complicated as the customer we delivered to is not the "owner" of the cable that was broken.

RIDDOR - premises owner

Liability - your driver (this is why insurance of motor vehicles is mandatory to cover loss, damage or injury caused to others). Let's look at this differently if your driver whilst reversing in a well signed, well managed location with a banksman, had clipped the corner of a wall would you be questioning paying for damages? The banksman may well be directing the vehicle but they are not "in control" of the vehicle

The driver is meant to be aware of their surroundings.

Your option is not to pay, the owners option is to approach your insurer - have you even notified your insurer of what is likely a less than excess incident?

As the premises controller they could also of course ban your vehicles from their site making your relationship with your actual customer problematic or even approach your customer for damages arising from their delivery.

Unfortunatley it is quicker to make enemies than it is to nurture friendships.

To be honest it wouldn't be a problem if we did upset the owner, since it is but one unit on the complex, and not one that has to be passed.

My investigation has shown the following (backed up by cctv, driver logs, and photographs)

• The cable was installed within the past month, since we have driven down the access road within the past month, in a vehicle the same height and not had a collision.
• The cable was around a blind corner. It therefore would not have been visible from the driver's cab unless he lierally stopped at the corner and looked up immediately.
• It was 7:15am in the morning, and the area was not lit.
• The cable had no markings or indication that it was there, apart from the sign.
• The "sign" was a carboard sign with "warning overhead cable" written on in marker pen, situated on a wall parrallel to the road, so the driver would have to turn to look at the wall as they drove passed to read it. It mentioned no height restriction.
• The driver was driving dead slow when it happened, but didn't even notice they had hit a cable. It wasn't until they returned and we told them that they were aware.

If anything I am tempted to reply that we want money for the scratches to our lorry!

I have actually suggested that we will pay but, for insurance/investigation purposes I require evidence of the installation price and date, the risk assessment for the cable (to show our driver was negligent), and the landlord's written permission to have the cable re-instated. We shall see what happens....

That is interesting. Our lorry is 4.25m high

It must have been installed within the last month, or something significantly changed. Our lorry went the same route in January (backed up by our trackers), and never had an issue.

Back in January was everything identical to this recent eventful trip?

Same tyre pressures all round

Identical payload being carried so that the suspension was equally depressed

Load equally distributed so that neither the cab nor rear of the vehicle was elevated.

No maintenance or improvement of the roadway e.g. new layer of tarmac

As to the height of installation does the roadway have gutters / channels or a significant camber meaning measurements taken up the wall from ground level are not the same as those taken at the mid-point between buildings?

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Back in January was everything identical to this recent eventful trip?

Same tyre pressures all round

Identical payload being carried so that the suspension was equally depressed

Load equally distributed so that neither the cab nor rear of the vehicle was elevated.

No maintenance or improvement of the roadway e.g. new layer of tarmac

As to the height of installation does the roadway have gutters / channels or a significant camber meaning measurements taken up the wall from ground level are not the same as those taken at the mid-point between buildings?

Can't vouch for tyre pressures, but they were within the safe parameters, and I doubt they would add a significant height difference

We have air suspension set so that the lorry should always be within the same height, in practice it varies by around +-10cm. In the incidence we last delivered the lorry was empty when it went through, on this occasion it was at around half load, so if anything it should have been lower, but because of the air suspension this is not a given.

Again, with the air suspension the bed should always be relatively flat

There had been no maintenance on the road, which is flat. It is concrete, the sort you find in most industrial car parks., there is no significant camber to speak of. 

As for the cable being slack, I don't know, as the driver never saw it on any previous runs, or in fact this run. This would be the only scenerio I can foresee causing the incident on this occasion. With high winds recently it may have come loose.

As I said, there may have been a significant change, but I can't see what that would be.