In the case of Davie v Manuel a young overseas backpacker was seriously injured in a car accident. She had borrowed a car from the hostel where she was staying to drive to a farm job. She drove the car on a dirt road near Arthur River when she lost control, the car left the road and crashed, and she, unfortunately, suffered serious injuries. Ms Davie alleged that she had crashed because the speedometer in the car was broken. She argued that she was unable to manage her speed because of the broken speedometer which meant that she had inadvertently driven too fast and had entered a corner too fast. She sued the owner of the car for failing to maintain the car in a roadworthy condition.
The common law duty to maintain your car
In this case, the owner accepted that she owed a duty of care to any person who used her car with her permission. The Court held that an owner of a car has a common law duty of care to make sure that the car is properly maintained so that it can be driven safely.
But the owner said that she had not breached her duty of care: she argued that she had always maintained her car and that she didn’t know that the speedometer was broken. She had her mechanic give evidence at the trial to show that her car had been recently serviced and that with the exception of the speedometer the car was well maintained. The Court examined the evidence and concluded that she ought to have known that the speedometer was broken. But does that still leaves the question: is a car with a broken speedometer is unsafe?
Does the broken part in the car make the car unsafe to drive?
Under the Road Traffic (Vehicles) Regulations 2014 an owner of a car must make sure that all of the car’s parts are in serviceable condition. Clearly, a broken speedometer is a breach of those regulations. But just because a car might breach traffic regulations does not mean that the car is unsafe to drive. A breach of the regulations may put an owner at risk of getting an infringement notice or a fine, but that has nothing to do with whether the owner has breached their duty of care to other users of the car.
In civil law the test is whether a car with a broken speedometer would put a driver, or other road users, at risk of an accident. The Court decided that drivers rely on the speedometer to make decisions about speed and that a broken speedometer could put a driver at risk of losing control of the vehicle. Therefore lending a car to somebody knowing that the speedometer is broken is negligent.
But, did the broken speedometer cause this accident?
The Court said no. Unfortunately, Ms Davie could not prove that it was her excessive speed in entering the corner on a dirt road that caused her to crash. She needed to prove that had the speedometer been working that the accident would not have happened. Unfortunately, there were just too many questions left unanswered for the Court to find that she would have driven at a different speed if the speedometer had been working and that that lower speed would have prevented the accident.
Lessons
There are 2 big lessons from this case:
- If you own a car, then you owe a duty of care to anybody using your car to maintain your car in safe working condition. It will not help you to say that you have your car regularly serviced. If something is broken, and you should know that it is broken, you need to do something about it. If not, then you could be in breach of your duty of care.
- If you are in a car accident that you think was caused by a badly maintained car, it is critical to address the issue of causation. You need to prove that the broken part made the car unsafe, and then you still need to prove how that broken part was the cause of the accident. In other words, you need to show that had that part been in good working condition that your accident would not have happened.
