Your thoughts on an incident

We had a Barrier come down on our last coachbuilt motorcaravan at MIM as we were passing through ,they were only useing the one barrier for both ways as they were resurfacing the roads,,I had a letter from the regional manager apologising and accepted responsibility

All down to you in my opinion, if you had had two mirrors fitted like the law requires you to have you would have been able to position yourself better on the road and not cut the corner with the caravan.  Save your money and put it down to experience your on a loser if you pursue it and may end up having to pay the barriers owners cost.

Sorry to disappoint but this looks to me as an unfortunate accident. I would treat this as such and make a claim on the insurance - after all that what it is there for. In no circumstance would I consider legal action unless you can afford lose a lot of money if/when the case goes against you which I think is quite likely

Agree with above, you should be able to see down both sides of the caravan and as your van is wider than your car you obviously could not as you admit above.  Seems you were in the middle of the road and hit the barrier that you could see coming down, the onus is not on the person to tell you to stop (but obviously it would have been helpful). So I think if you go to court you would lose and maybe get points and or fine for not having mirrors fitted.

I'm afraid you need to bite the bullet and pay up...

I agree that the accident was due to the OP but ..... every other barrier I've come across has had pressure pads across the entrance &/or a photo cell 'looking' across the road such that in a situation such as this the barrier would at least stop coming down.

If the action were in a small claims court cost recoveries are very limited. I personally would not wish to waste time and effort on bringing this particular claim. 

Thankyou for all your input. Unfortunately on the A1 driving to the site a strap on my nearside mirror snapped and I had to remove it just incase it came off and hit another vehicle. I always drive with two mirrors as a rule. Just unfortunately this happened on the day if the incident. 

As I was there I never seen the barriers open or close, to me they were up and the road ahead was clear. He asked me to go ahead and gave no indication that the barriers were in operation, I moved over to avoid the fence, I was being careful in my opinion. The attendant could see it come down and didn't say anything, my car stayed within my carriageway and my caravan overhung the white line by two inches.

I have been in contact with the company who installed the barriers and they told me that they recommended for photocells and remote control fobs to be utilised but the park at the last minute decided not to have them installed. These devises have since been installed onto the barriers and they are counterclaiming the cost of them to be fitted onto myself.

My caravan was 2 feet from the fence on impact.

CCTV shows the road to be really wide but in fact it is pretty narrow. I will upload a pic.

I take everything onboard and thanks for everyone's time, although if yourselves were in a position were you could take extra room to be cautious in the thought that everything would be fine, let alone the attendant walking alongside my car and never informes me, I would like to think yourselves would like to use extra space.

Yes it was an acceidnt but it could have been avoided if they had adequate safety devices installed as recommended through a risk assessment and as it is the attendants duty to make sure people and property enter safely negligence is on him as he did not inform me. 

Ian

 It won't let me upload a pic

Hate to say it, but I think a lot of what you are saying is Solicitor wriggle. Don’t forget they get paid even if you lose, so think carefully about the cost of all this over what only looks to be trivial damage to your van.

Sorry, but I don’t think things will work out in your favour. 

It probably needs reducing. You’re welcome to email the pic to me and I’ll have a go if you want. Email address in my profile.