There are legal precidents to situations such as this. Much like the person who slips and falls in the store/resturaunt and sue's the owner of the property. My wife slipped on spilled water in a resturaunt once while we were being led to our table. We got a visit from the manager who waived our bill even though we said she wss ok, which I feel was basically to make nice with us so we didn't drive to a law firm as soon as we left. Thats the situation my parents worry about with their farm, people tresapss and get sutck/hurt and they can afford a better lawyer. So the owners of the road probably want to cya to show thet the gate ws not neglected which could lead to legal fault. We get various notices each winter from the city/county/state governments about road conditions and such to inform us that they are only at fault if a hazardous road condition caused your accident/damage due to their neglect and have published times to clearing snow, repairing potholes, etc from the time of notification. So if you see a hole in the road for a couple days driving to work then hit that hole and damage your car and you try to sue them for neglect and you can't proove that they were notfied then your on your own.