A Lowell woman crashed her truck in December after a sprinkler system turned the road icy. She now owes upward of $5,000 for damage to her truck and a hospital bill. Who is responsible and who should pay the bill remains an unanswered question. The problem is no one knows who turned on the sprinklers.
Linda Bates, 59, was driving to work on her usual route the morning of Dec. 27. Around 7:30 a.m. she hit an icy patch on Hudson Boulevard by The Villages at Ballantyne apartments. The odd thing was the roads were completely dry everywhere except at that spot.
There, a sprinkler system had sprayed water onto the road. With temperatures dipping into the 20s, the water froze. “Once I hit that ice, I had no control,” Bates said.
Her 1994 Toyota pickup swerved, hit a guardrail then slid to the other side of the road, hitting the median. The truck stopped after hitting a tree. According to the accident report, Bates was going below the 45 mph speed limit. The report estimates she was going 40 mph when she hit the ice and 30 mph when she hit the tree. The icy road caused the wreck, according to police.
Bates received minor injuries but had to be treated at the hospital. She had bruises on her side and needed stitches on her nose. With her hospital bill and the damage to her truck, the crash will cost Bates around $5,000. She did not have collision insurance to help cover the cost.
When her insurance company tried to file a claim with the housing development, Willow Creek, the claim was denied. The housing development said the landscape company, Southern Shade Tree, was responsible for the sprinkler system. The landscape company also denied the claim.
Kathy Atchley with Southern Shade Tree didn’t know the claim had been turned down but said she knows why it was. The company had records showing the system had been winterized in November.
The water had been turned off, with pipes emptied of water and wrapped in insulation. Sometime between the system being winterized in November and the wreck in late December, someone turned the sprinklers back on, Atchley said. “It happens,” Atchley said. “Sometimes homeowners will go out there and rip off the insulation and turn the water on.”
It usually occurs in the spring, she said, but is fairly common. “I’m sorry it happened, I am, but no one called and noticed it so we didn’t know,” she said.
Bates spoke with a lawyer about her predicament. “Since it wasn’t related to medical damage they weren’t interested and said it would cost me out of pocket,” she said. “If I had money to pay a lawyer I could go ahead and get my truck fixed.”
Unless she can find out who turned on the sprinkler system, Bates’ insurance claim remains in limbo. “I just don’t know where else to turn,” she said. “I don’t know where to go or what to do.”
You can reach reporter Lauren Baheri at 704-869-1842 or Twitter.com/lbaheri.