Loose drain cover rips off car’s exhaust
A MOTORIST whose exhaust was ripped from her car by an unsecured drain cover was shocked by the lack of urgency in making the area safe.
Maxine Le Tocq was being dropped-off for work at North Beach car park yesterday morning, when the car she was travelling in went over a loose drain cover forcing it to pop up and remove the whole of the car’s exhaust system.
Work is now taking place to fix the site.
‘We heard a massive clank,’ she said.
‘The grid draining system had not been secured properly and had just been left. So the pressure from the car tyre going over it made it fly up and take the exhaust off the car. The car park is in quite bad shape so as we went down a dip and then onto the drain the extra pressure must have added to it.’
The parking space was in the front rows of the car park.
Mrs Le Tocq said they were ‘driving normally’ into an available parking space at the time.
‘After it happened we managed to push the car into the space in front leaving the space behind us open where all of it was ripped up,’ she said.
‘It was dangerous, you could catch your foot in it, if you had a child in a pram the wheel could catch in it.’
After the incident took place Mrs Le Tocq was assisted by a police officer who removed the lose drain cover and took photos of the site.
‘What was annoying was that we thought the States would come down to cordon the area off, but nobody did,’ she said.
‘There seemed to be an argument over which department was responsible, apparently it’s a harbour car park, but somebody else had responsibility for the surfaces.
‘What was more worrying is that it could be dangerous, if somebody tried to park there the same could happen.
‘The thing is, these things happen, but somebody has to step up and say ‘‘OK, let’s sort it’’.
‘I’m fine, I lost two hours out of my day I’m never going to get back and I’ve had to leave the car there as it’s undriveable.
‘But somebody has to be accountable for it, it wasn’t our fault, we were just unlucky.’
A States spokesman said they had been made aware of the incident.
‘A police officer on the scene notified Guernsey Water who have investigated and works are being undertaken to resolve the issue,’ he said.
