John McGuinness column

QCan I claim from council for gritting my bike?

‘Whether you succeed is a real conundrum’

I was riding along an A-road in Derbyshire and keeping a safe distance from the truck in front when all of a sudden big orange lights lit up and it started chucking grit out of the back. Turns out it was a council gritter and my Vespa was in the eye of the storm. It was lucky I stayed on because I wasn’t expecting it and got in a bit of a panic. When I got home, still shaking from the near miss, I found that the paintwork on the front of the 125 was damaged and needs restorative work. Can I claim the cost from the council? Jonno, email

AContact the council in writing and explain what happened. Request their gritting records from the evening in question to confirm that one of their vehicles was in the location. Whether or not you will succeed in claiming the cosmetic repair work is a conundrum. On one hand there is the argument that they are out to grit in the interests of road safety. On the other, if it had used the lights as an early warning and there had been an interval before it started spraying grit, you would have presumably had time to react and drop back so the bike would not have sustained the damage. I think you need to argue that they should have done this, or started spraying when they first set off, otherwise other road users have no chance to avoid the sudden onslaught.