NFU Mutual is warning farmers to take care over mud on the road following a series of serious incidents. It reminds farmers that it is your responsibility to ensure that every precaution is taken to avoid any mud being carried off the field. It has provided the follwing checklist.

• Do everything possible to prevent mud being deposited on the road. This includes cleaning mud from vehicles, as far as practicable, before they are taken onto the road.
• Be prepared to hire in equipment to clean up accidentally deposited mud – check availability in advance.
• Keep to your own farm roads and minor roads whenever possible
  Keep to low speeds – especially when travelling short distance – to help retain mud on the vehicle.
• Keep a written record of your decisions on whether or not to deploy signs and/or to clean the road.
• If there is a danger of mud being accidentally deposited on roads, use authorised ‘Slippery Road’ signs with a ‘Mud on Road’ sub plate to alert other road users.
• Make sure signs are positioned to give maximum visibility and warning to other road users.
• Clean the road as necessary during the working day and always at the end of the working day.
• Ensure that labour and equipment is available and is suitable for the soil and weather conditions present.
• Where a contractor is used, ensure that prior agreement is reached on who is responsible for mud on road issues (signage, cleaning etc).

Confession time - do you do all/or any of these? And if you have Mud on road signs are they authorised slippery road ones.

I don't need to take to the roads when working, but one thing I have noticed is no-one around here bothers to clean up after them, nor are warning signs used.

Burn your beet contract?

 All around us the narrow lanes have many pot holes and crumbling edges to the made up road. In addition, passing places are created by running up the verges and the sandy soil simply runs off to muddy the road during every rain storm.

The council never come around to clean the road from such run offs. What is their responsibility for 1) repairing the road and 2) cleaning mud?

 There seems to be a lot of correspondence regarding tractors & trailers bringing mud out onto a road. Do the rules still apply to mud from cows' feet being deposited on the road regardless of whether it is on a C class road or not?  

I've just put a call into NFU Mutual to ask.

I've just had a response - although I should probably point out that this shouldn't be regarded as definitive advice. I'm giving you a rough summary of what I was told and I'm no lawyer.

 As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter how the mud is deposited ie if it comes from cows then the rules still apply that you should take steps to do something about it. What might be different is that if it was on a very small road then the court might take a different view on what it regarded as negligence on the part of the farmer. ie it might say that an accident was 60% the farmer's fault because you'd deposited mud and done nothing to either warn people about it, or clear it up, but it was 40% the driver's fault because they should have been taking more care on that kind of road...

On a similar theme - I've heard people argue that if you put up a sign and then something happens you are admitting liability. I'm told this isn't really the case.

By putting up a sign you are admitting there is a potential problem - and if you do none of the other steps then you would probably be partially negligent in the event of an incident. But if you don't put up a sign but know the mud is there and it is a potential hazard you are actually making yourself completly negligent, rather than just partially negligent.

I think that is pretty much it.

 We get the farmer who wre working for to clean it off the road when we finesh to job with a loader tractor. or if were spreading with the big NH that has a front blade then we just tilt the blade for the ditch when we draw the last load out and clean it off that way. Have to say thow there was a hell of a lot of mud on the road yesterday farmer had to clean it 4 or 5 times to ceek the opp happey

Our roads are all mud when it rains....that pretty much takes care of it. 

You should always put a sign up. It is not admitting any liability. It is a warning to take care, and as such drivers should exercise a higher degree of care than usual.

The guy that crashed into me tried to blame the mud we left on the road.  Just one problem with his theory: he was coming from the far side of the gateway, so the area he was on was clear, only my part was muddy.  Maybe the crash had something to do with him doing 40mph on a very narrow and high banked lane.

On a related topic, what about cowmuck left on the road?  A couple of local dairy farms have their cows travelling on the road to and from milking, and I reckon this is what keeps rotting the undersides of my cars.  Are they responsible for cleaning the mess, as some people say cowmuck / horsemuck on country roads is an accepted hazard and doesn't have to be cleaned?

What is the legal position when Defra are aware that there are badgers with TB in the area. A badger then dies on the road and a eco-friendly Prius comes along, skids on the dead badger and overturns. The ambulance men are on the scene in seconds, but one of them breathes in exhalations from the dead badger's lungs which have been compressed because his colleague has trodden on the animal in his eagerness to get to the beautiful, but uninjured, young lady still strapped alluringly upside down in her Prius.

• Can the young lady claim for damages to her car due to the County Council's dereliction of its duty to clean up the road?
• Can the one ambulance man claim compensation from Hilary Benn for his subsequently being found with TB?
• And can I claim for the hurt caused, whilst being pushed aside by a public servant in his eagerness to free the nubile young lady from her predicament?

TeslaCoils:

You should always put a sign up. It is not admitting any liability. It is a warning to take care, and as such drivers should exercise a higher degree of care than usual.

some years ago a work m8 of mine left some mud on the road and 5 cars and a bmotorbike went in the ditch that night, obviously they came with the police knocking on the marm house door, afetr exchanging insurance BUT not admitting liability the police inspectors and road traffic police told my gaffer at the time to NEVER put signs on the road as you will admit liability, just ensure as soon as possible the road is returned to a clean state.

Incidently we got away with the whole cafuffle as it was icy that night and the police blamed it on that and by the hand of god we was saved from prosecution! 

There has been an explosion of maize harvesting round here, and even A roads are thick with mud. There are no signs and i'm dreading the next drizzly day......