Difficult situation this one lads...
I'm not in anyway suggesting that lads should pay for damages all the time BUT sometimes you have to be responsible for your own actions, for example.
We had a lad that loaded ply sheets onto his lorry and didnt strap them down correctly (In fact I dont think he strapped them down at all) and drove down the motorway, you guessed it, a number of sheets blew off the wagon and caused a huge amount of damage to some cars not to mention the chaos caused by shutting the motorway etc, in truth it was lucky nobody was f*cking killed!!
Now in that instance the insurance paid out the claim as it was above our excess and apart from a right good f*cking the lad didnt get financially penalised BUT whos to blame??!! It certainly wasnt the Company was it?? (Please... before anyone chirps in with "The Company should have checked his load...A driver is ALWAYS responsible for their own load...Reference Road Traffic Act)
This leads me to my next point, Insurances carry an excess, in our case its £5k (When I worked for SGB Nottingham it was nearly £100k!!)so anything under we are liable for which will come straight off the bottom line (Which is a very thin if not non exsistant line nowadays!!) which hurts the business and can have knock on effects in other areas of the Company.
We as a rule dont get a lot of damage problems (Touching wood as I write!!)maybe 4 or 5 windows a year and the odd car scratch but I think people should be responsible for their actions and be financially penalised for irresponsible situations that they alone have created...