Driven over wet tarmac - who is at fault here?

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For me this is 90% council's fault, 10% OP's GF's fault.

The signage is clearly diaboliical as evidenced by the improved signage laid down by the council after the incident. Also I can sympathise with driving around the cone, there's often cones in the road for no reason such as when people block off parking spaces outside their house. That said the driver obviously has to take some responsibility.
 
weringo said:
For me this is 90% council's fault, 10% OP's GF's fault.

The signage is clearly diaboliical as evidenced by the improved signage laid down by the council after the incident. Also I can sympathise with driving around the cone, there's often cones in the road for no reason such as when people block off parking spaces outside their house. That said the driver obviously has to take some responsibility.
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Id say the otherbway around she drove past guys laying tarmac, drove around a cone blocking access and then drove back across it again.

(Might have been better to ditch the car till the tarmac dried and have half the **** up)
 
Whats with the everyone's fault but my own mentality.

The drive was blocked with a traffic cone with a intuitive "wet tar" sign. Just because she didn't see it, ignored it, didn't understand it, etc.. doesn't magically absolve her from blame.

Yes the more signs the more obvious and harder to miss it becomes, but the fact remains that it was signed and was simply a small mistake caused by lack of attention.

Sometimes its hard and unpleasant to take responsibility for your actions. but a Brush, a gallon of petrol and the morning spent scrubbing will surely go down better with the client than "sorry not fault I didn't see the sign".
 
Kelah said:
but a Brush, a gallon of petrol and the morning spent scrubbing will surely go down better with the client than "sorry not fault I didn't see the sign".
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nope, that aint gonna work,
im a groundworker/paver by trade, those blocks need to be replaced,
its not a big job, 1/2 a days labour and £20-£30 materials, so around £100-£120 to have it propery fixed
paying some one to clean it is a gamble imho, im not so sure the client would be happy with the results, and you could end up throwing good money after bad.
 
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cainer said:
nope, that aint gonna work,
im a groundworker/paver by trade, those blocks need to be replaced,
its not a big job, 1/2 a days labour and £20-£30 materials, so around £100-£120 to have it propery fixed
paying some one to clean it is a gamble imho, im not so sure the client would be happy with the results, and you could end up throwing good money after bad.
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Call yourself a tradesman, you didn't even do that sucking between the teeth noise before giving an idea of cost. How much for cash in hand too..
 
G/F fault imho. I'd always question why there was a cone blocking access before trying to get around it.

Unrelated, but if I ran a business I'd avoid simply driving into a clients driveway on that road. There are no yellow lines and it always strikes me as a little rude for someone to park on your driveway in such circumstances unless you know them well.
 
Kelah said:
Whats with the everyone's fault but my own mentality.

The drive was blocked with a traffic cone with a intuitive "wet tar" sign. Just because she didn't see it, ignored it, didn't understand it, etc.. doesn't magically absolve her from blame.
.
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Yeah it's quite scary how many people are siding with her despite the fact she drove around the cone that was blocking her path onto the drive.
Sign of the times I guess - nothing is my fault there's always someone else to blame etc etc.
Sad.
 
looking at the first pic I was going to ask why she drove over the grass? Then the second pic explains it... there was a cone in the way with a sign (granted it facing in the opposite direction but still the cone was there and clearly did its job blocking the drive).

Was she so lazy that she couldn't move the cone out of the way? I mean she's deliberately chosen to drive over the grass which is ****** of her in itself but if she'd not been lazy and simply got up to move the cone like a normal considerate person then she'd have been able to read the sign if not seen the obviously wet tarmac up close. Either way the cone was blocking her way and the only reason she's been able to drive over that tarmac without moving it is because she went across the grass.

She ought to pay up as she has messed up there.
 
lude1962 said:
The fact that Miss X could just drive around the cone indicates the measures put in place by the council were totally inadequate.
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she couldn't just drive around it, she had to mount the grass verge in order to do so... so clearly saw the cone but just chose to ignore it (in addition to being totally oblivious to the other signs along the road)
 
Seems OP is AWOL but I agree with the majority of posters, take responsibility.

I would turn up in person, apologise in person with a smile. Offer to clean it up yourself (cheapest way unless you losing time to do other clients work), if that fails then pay for a professional to do it. (once my landlord came to clean up a mess his workers left in back garden manually, he is a wealthy guy but did not think it beneath him to do the work, turned up with a wheelbarrow one morning and cleaned it all up).

I would also offer to waive the fee for the latest dog walk (client will probably refuse refund but earns you brownie points) as compensation for the time and stress caused.

Crap happens, in the past I have compensated clients for mistakes which were quite expensive compared to what they were paying me, but I did it as was right and didnt want bad word of mouth.

Afterwards you free to take it up with the council if you think can get anything out of them and/or put it on insurance.

I think your GF is putting a too rosy picture on I am afraid, its 1+1, a cone combined with visual new tarmac (assuming this is not a first time visit surely could tell new tarmac laid) would make me think immediately its freshly laid even without a sign.
 
I think the council and the OP's girlfriend definitely share the blame and the customer is probably also partially to blame:

The council is partially to blame because the signage is badly inadequate.

The OP's girlfriend is partially to blame because they mounted the curb to avoid the cone they had obviously seen blocking access to the driveway.

The customer is probably partially to blame because they knew the OP's girlfriend was coming to pick up the dog and they probably knew that the resurfacing was being done.

Since the OP's girlfriend is running a business, I think the least bad course of action would be for her to rectify the problem caused to her customer and to do so promptly and with good grace. That will probably be less expensive than annoying a customer. Explaining to the customer about the lack of signage is something that should be done after arranging to rectify the problem, not instead of it.

I'd be wary of having the customer arrange it and giving me the bill, though. They're unlikely to care much about getting a good price if they know someone else is paying and the company they hire to do the work might well increase the price if they know someone else is paying. A job that would cost £200 can easily become one costing £300 to someone else who isn't there and can't dispute the price or hire a different company.
 
Morning,

Went away to Salcombe this weekend to stay with family so have had no signal pretty much all weekend. It was like being in the dark ages ;)

We messaged the client on Friday apologising for the problem and offering to pay for the work to be done as quickly as possible. We iterated that our main objective was to get this resolved in a timely manner with minimal impact to them. They have not got back to us as of yet.

We have sent a follow up message this morning asking what the current status is and if we need to start contacting local companies and organising to have the work carried out. We have no idea if they have sorted it themselves or started the balling rolling as we've been away all weekend. The timing is most unfortunate but we could not do anything over the weekend.

I would also like to state that it has never been our intention to shift blame to the council and not hold our hands up. The purpose of this thread was to gauge if the council had placed insufficient signage. There was no photograph taken of the road from the opposite angle. I don't know why, I can assure you that it is not a grassy knoll conspiracy. Both before and after photos are of the same road from the same angle.

Also, I don't appreciate the negative comments about my girlfriends intelligence, morale fibre and common sense. She is only just turned 24 years old but has managed to create a business from nothing that earns her over twice the national average wage without any money from mummy and daddy or industry connections, I am incredibly proud of her. I think any small incident like this can be overlooked and should not cause her character to be questioned. If photos of her beating a dog to death surfaced then fair enough but to have her morale fibre questioned over something like this is unfair.

Once again thanks for the advice and I will update everyone with what the council say.
 
Now here comes another 10 pages of "OP is talking ****, there's no way she earns that".

Surely you've been here long enough MG42Maniac to know you volunteer as little info to GD as you can get away with unless you want each part dissected.
 
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If she earns that much then she should've sorted it without any fuss, the good name of her business is paramount here, yes the signage isn't great and that's something to take up with the council but it was her who decided to mount the kerb to avoid a cone that was put in front of the drive.
 
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