In the news

Ah but...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-18421161

Potentially some shoddy reporting from the Indy. The BBC actually bothered to speak to the Council about this and they say that they have inspected the street and discovered no defects. So now we have another angle on the story.

So we have what appears to be a single incident which, unfortunately, has resulted in a significant injury. The Royal Mail hasn't backed up their claim with reports of other similar incident in that area and the Council has countered their claim with an inspection.
This leaves the following questions;
i) Was the Council's inspection of the street appropriately robust?
ii) Did the Royal Mail consider alternative measures to mitigate the risk? If so, why where they rejected?
iii) As the potential weak link in this story, is the mail delivery person's version of events credible?

Ha, so it's even worse than I suspected. You can be guaranteed that this will become an urban myth, though.