12-16-2017, 06:20 PM
(12-16-2017, 05:16 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: Does anyone know how much the local cities/region pays out in claims for slipping on sidewalks?
Message to the city: Be nice, clear our ice
"...costing the city an additional estimated $10 million a year...the annual tab for snow removal per capita in Toronto would increase about $4 from $32.77."
"...the city currently pays out between $7 million and $20 million a year in claims from those who’ve slipped on icy city sidewalks."
This is a weird situation. The City should be doing the snow clearing, in part to get uniformity and in part to increase efficiency. But on the other hand, it should also be almost impossible to win a slip-and-fall claim based on ice. There are products — one brand is called “icers” — which strap on to boots, giving them studs that simply do not slip. You can walk right across a perfectly smooth ice surface as if it were clean dry concrete. Given the existence of such products, how is slipping and falling not the fault of the person falling? Even an extremely rigorous program of clearing snow and ice will miss spots occasionally, and the snow is a natural phenomenon, so expecting the outdoors to be completely non-slip is totally unreasonable. As far as I’m concerned, liability should not be incurred for slip-and-fall for anything short of deliberately making things worse.