I had a motorbike crash this morning, on almost exactly the boundary line between Stockport and High Peak. I’m fine, and the damage to my bike is hopefully superficial. I wasn’t the only one who came a cropper with 3 different cars sliding and crashing into others.

The road hadn’t been gritted which contributed to all the crashes. I have seen the gritters from the High Peak side abandon their task approximately 500m before getting to the boarder, and I’ve never actually seen a gritter come from the Stockport side of things.

As it seems that both councils don’t seem prepared to grit what they both deem a priority route, what would be the best course of action to persuade them that at least one of them should be putting some grit down? Surely there should be an arrangement whereby the boarder area is either done alternately by each council, or overlapped and done twice?

I’ve contacted Stockport in the past about the shocking state of repair of a number of their roads, and have been palmed off with “We’ll send an engineer out to have a look”and no response back.

I used to sit on the hill and watch the Northumberland CC gritter hit the Scottish border of a night time – right up to it and not a yard further, when the flashing lights went off, they drove 100 yards to a turning point and back, then the very second they hit the border again, the lights came back on – brilliant!

I think most of them publish the routes and criteria on their website now – Stockports is here:

http://www.stockport.gov.uk/services/transport/highwayandstreetlightmaintenance/wintermaintenance/grittingtheroads/grittingroutes

and given the preponderance of GPS trackers, I’ll bet that every gritting run is recorded to cover their arse for liability, so if they’re finishing short of the border you’ll likely have a good chance of a negligence claim, as they would be in breach of their statutory duty.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldjudgmt/jd000615/goodes-1.htm

Certainly in terms of gritting, there is little comeback on the council for the crash. Not the answer to the question, but just throwing it out there.

The law was changed after the Goodes V East Sussex judgement – they inserted a duty under S.41(1A) of the 1980 Highways act to keep routes clear of snow and ice as far as reasonably practicable, hence all the councils coming up with a detailed gritting plan.

(god, I’ve spent too long reading rights of way law books!)

I didn’t think there would be any comeback on the council, and it’s not that I’m blaming anyone.

It just seems that the crashes this morning could have been avoided if they’d put some grit down, and if, as I suspect, they’re not gritting the boarder, then I’d like to know why.

Have you contacted your local county councillor? there is an election coming soon, so they might be keen on getting the press, if not your actual councillor, then candidates tend to be pretty active round this time.

The only thing I’ve done so far (apart from ache a lot!) is ask both councils for gritting records for yesterday and today.

I wasn’t sure where to go from there….

What road is this please, keen to avoid it

Happens very often on the Wolverhampton-Dudlay border some mornings you can see where the gritter has u-turned and gone back while ahead there’s carnage as people drive from a safe-ish gritted road onto an icy one.

Also the Black Country route passes through so many parishes it doesn’t appear to be anyone’s responsibility.

The Leek-Buxton road is often like this, with the Staffordshire side well gritted. When you get to the Derbyshire border the fun begins 🙂