Caterham passenger sues Caterham for damages

[Guest]

Haven't seen this posted up... thought might be of general interest.

Link to story

Feel for the guy, but sueing Caterham seems a bit of a stretch to me as owners on PH report the hose coming off differently to description.

[SteveD]

hard to judge without all the facts ,anything else is just speculation

[Captain Colonial]

hard to judge without all the facts ,anything else is just speculation

Like that's stopped us in the past from saying things...

Popcorn! Get your popcorn here!

[SteveD]

true   , but its a bit different when someone is seriously injured

[Martin Keene]

I can't see this going anywhere at all. If the car has anybody but Caterham do any work on it, which is highly probably given the car, then its an easy get out for Caterham I would have thought.

[lippydave]

I ain't scared to give my opinion even on the scant reportage of the facts....    

The claimant should be sent the link to the following webpage.....man up    

[rocket_rabbit]

I can see this being settled out of court TBH.

Caterham have just been bought and their profile is such that they are now F1 Sponsors, not to mention their new car.

The R500 will almost certainly have been bougt new by a yuppie mid-life crisis-er who has all the gear but no idea....they usually turn up in Atoms, but since the R500 was on Top Gear, why not.

Caterham charge a premium for their cars so if the oil hose was poorly positioned, they will lose.

[V8grunt]

Erm isn't there normally a sign and even a warning printed on your admittence ticket...

"Motor Racing is dangerous"

You don't get in a car and get driven around a racing circuit at high speed without some sort of ownus on yourself,

"I'm doing something extremly dangerous so if anything goes wrong it's my fault!"  

It's like going hang gliding, dangerous, and possibly life threatning.  

[Plumber Boy]

Erm isn't there normally a sign and even a warning printed on your admittence ticket...

"Motor Racing is dangerous"

You don't get in a car and get driven around a racing circuit at high speed without some sort of ownus on yourself,

"I'm doing something extremly dangerous so if anything goes wrong it's my fault!"  

It's like going hang gliding, dangerous, and possibly life threatning.  

If you read the article correctly..the reported incident has nothing to do with the circuit being used at the time.!

cheers Jon

[greenwood03]

actually FWIW the car wasnt bought by a 'mid -life' crisis bloke with all the gear and no idea, far from it. Having met and been out on drives with the owner in question its pretty clear that he's pretty experienced when it comes to rapid machines, and that that r500 wasn't his first Caterham - and it certainly wasn't a one off whim to go and visit teh Ring, i believe that he's pretty well acquainted with TD's etc etc.  if indeed the oil pipe was incorrectly sited on that car i would have thought there was a case to answer by Caterham - time will tell.

[echoz]

In the same breath surely at some stage whilst working on the car he would have seen said pipe and thought hmmm that might end badly and move it in such a way that it isn't dragging?

can a tiny oil leak out of a hose really cause a slide like that? i mean its not like it dumped its load under the wheels in one big shot, a little drip here and there wouldnt cause anything surely?

Also if the guy is hopsital with head trauma, can we assume the car is probably in a right sorry state? so how do we know the hose was broke before the accident?

[RedditchJay]

It is also claimed the company has admitted liability in an open letter dated August 7, 2009.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm who signed that off i wonder.....

[Mark Stanton]

QUOTE

Motor Racing is dangerous

Non-Competitive Trackdays - are not motor racing      

[greenwood03]

Echoz - ' when he worked on the car' - why assume that a buyer of a brand new r500 would work on a car?

no idea how much oil in general would spew out of split hose, i'd imagine that on a pumped dry sump system a fair bit ? or perhaps a cumulative effect of gradually coating the wheel (s). Under the wrong circs it doesnt take much to break contact with the tarmac even in a straightish line, as i found out when i missed spotting a bit of oil coming onto the straight at Brands and end up all over the place - caused by shifting gear and hitting the torque band.

as regards to how much of the car was undamaged after the shunt and therefore what could be deduced in terms of causes/issues ahead of the 'off' - cant comment on this one, but how often is a car written off due to chassis damage with no visible damage/interference to the rear parts of the engine/transmission.

anyway, the purpose of the 1st reply was to hopefully stop folks assuming that it was a yuppie ( does that word exist anymore ) muppet with little clue, little experience, because for sure that isnt/wasnt the case.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Looking at the rate just the return feed returns oil to my DS tank it could shift a lot of oil very quickly if any thing happened to the hose, on the high pressure side, I really shudder to think, there can be upwards of four bar pressure in there at times.

I read about it last week, (before most of the threads seemed to have been pulled); suffice it to say, checked my own oil lines before using the car. All fine, and all well above the lowest point.