The allegations put forward are that the Highways Agency, in failing to identify that the particular stretch of road would become dangerous at an earlier stage, fell below the standards expected of it to keep roads clear as much as reasonably practicable. This involves keeping roads free of snow and ice in so much as they might avoid endangering the safety of users or, alternately, acting to minimise the risk through actions such as closing the section of road.
According to the BBC, amongst the incidents which occurred there were at least two serious injuries suffered, through no fault of the drivers, and injury claims have been brought in this respect. However, the Highways Agency has responded by stating that their levels of service were of a high standard and that the section of road was salted and gritted throughout late January.
The severity of the weather in January 2009 was more hostile than experienced for some time and both local councils and the Highways Agency struggled by their own admission to cope with the demand for roads to be gritted and cleared of ice.
In previous winters the intensity of conditions have been less so and the standards that the Highways Agency provided in clearing the roads were not in question, however, the Agency appears to believe that because they exceeded their normal levels of service for winter this year that they reached a standard which would be perceived as reasonable.
It is difficult to assess the responsibility of the Highways Agency for these accidents as there is obviously only so much that they can do to combat violent weather conditions and accidents will always unfortunately occur, however it must be noted that gritting the roads is only a reactive measure.
Perhaps they could adopt more preventative measures to combat the weather and learn lessons from this incident to prevent a similarly large scale incident occurring in future.