Grounded out on two potholes - do I have a claim?

Booner!

Booner!

Booner!

Soldato
Joined
29 Sep 2005
Posts
9,128
Hi chaps,

I've been over potholes before, but this time I decided to go back and do something about it as it was possible the nastiest scenario I've had with a pothole.

I was driving back at 8pm, there are no street lights on this section of road and I'd just brought my speed back up to 25-30mph after a rather large speedbump. I didn't see the first pothole until it was too late and by the time I realise what had happened, I was down the next.

The pic shows how close to the white line they are, so it's perfectly in line for my left wheels (far enough away from the curb which I don't cling to). As you can also see from the spacing, the front wheel went down the second pothole as the rear wheel went down the first pothole......leaving me to clench my buttocks/teeth and ground out on the road.

What's made this worse is that there are two.....hitting one wouldn't have done too much damage, but grounding 7cm+ down on both left wheels has made it worse. The tracking has been knocked out and it pulls to the left slightly, but the bottom of the car definitely made hard contact due to the ride height.

Do I have a claim? and should I get it checked out at the local stealers? I took it for a blast today, seems to be ok and after getting a quick look under it, just scrapes.. but the tracking is definitely out.


bothpotholes.jpg



Pot Hole A

Rough measurements =
Length - 112-115cm
Width - 52cm
Depth -8-9cm



Length

potholealength.jpg


Length close up

potholealength2.jpg


Width

potholeawidth.jpg


Width close up

potholeawidth2.jpg


Depth - hard to take photo against edge, but cam balanced on road

potholea.jpg





Pot Hole B

Rough measurements =
Length - 78-80cm
Width - 41-42cm
Depth -7-8cm


Length

potholeblength.jpg


Length close up

potholeblength2.jpg


Width

potholebwidth.jpg


Width close up

potholebwidth2.jpg


Depth

potholeb.jpg



Really frustrated as I regularly dodge potholes (about 8-10) on the way to work, so hitting a double whammy is annoying. However the roads around Oxford are pretty terrible at the moment, hard on the dark backroads!
 
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Depends on the council, iv still got a claim going on after 2 years with Bromley council.
 
I've heard it's tricky getting anything back from councils. But you can bet your house that they'll have someone out to repair them within the next day or two from when the claim goes in.
 
I drove down a CRATER a few weeks back. I was on my way to the office and it started to snow so said CRATER was full of snow. BANG!!! Big gouge out of my wheel and track 88 feet out of alignment. I thought I'll pop back in a couple of days take some photo's to find it nicely filled in. It was MASSIVE I have never seen a hole like it and I knew a girl called Adel so that's saying something.
 
Housey said:
I drove down a CRATER a few weeks back. I was on my way to the office and it started to snow so said CRATER was full of snow. BANG!!! Big gouge out of my wheel and track 88 feet out of alignment. I thought I'll pop back in a couple of days take some photo's to find it nicely filled in. It was MASSIVE I have never seen a hole like it and I knew a girl called Adel so that's saying something.
Click to expand...

:D:D
 
It's hard enough getting money out of them when you damage a car with standard suspension. I don't think you'll have a chance with a lowered car to be honest :(.
 
Beerbaron said:
How can it go on for so long?

Surely small claims court will speed things along :D
Click to expand...

I just left it in their hands, your not winning in court, i just stuck in for the damage and am waiting and waiting and waiting, i dont care i was bored one afternoon so thought id drive them mad a bit.
 
Unless it has already been reported before you damaged your car on it the council won't admit liability. If you can prove they knew about it and hadn't acted on it before you damaged your car you may have a claim.
Having a lowered car may hurt your claim though.
 
That looks appalling, can't say I've ever seen such massive holes anywhere around here... How can councils spend so little on road maint. ?
 
get them reported and filled in first.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/

brilliant site, reported all the potholes around here couple months back, they came out and filled them in within the week.

was so impressed with this ive reported basically every single one on my way in to my local town, last week they closed the whole road and patched every single one in! :cool:

dont think many people report them tbh.
 
Report the pothole. Then claim on it the next day. The council will only let you claim if they already know about the pothole (hence your call). If they know about it already though you may get your claim.

Don't use that website either. Report it directly on the councils website. All that site does is send e-mails to the council who then have to report them on a case by case basis. It's much quicker to do it though the council website and you'll get a reference to directly corrilate your report with that pothole, so making a claim against the pothole is easier.
 
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If a pothole is really bad, so that it could cause a motor cyclist to have an accident if he hit it (say in the rain when it was full of water on a dark night, for example), it is worth reporting it to the police also.

I did that once,and they immediatly came and coned it off, and gave me an incident number. I also took some photographs early the next morning, before the council came and filled it in later the same day.

When my wife submitted a claim to the Council for a new wheel and tyre for her Ford Ka, they settled in full, straight away.

Good Luck!

Edit: Just looked at the first post again... we were living in Oxfordshire also at the time, although I have a feeling the actual pothole might have been just 'over the border' in Gloucestershire!
 
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Oh that looks like a really nasty pair there :( ...is there any visible damage to the underside of the car?

As for your chances at a claim, I really don't know, I suppose if you cross all the T's and dot the I's then you will, but it could take a long time, longer than you may have the car.

snowdog said:
That looks appalling, can't say I've ever seen such massive holes anywhere around here... How can councils spend so little on road maint. ?
Click to expand...

I have never seen potholes like some of the ones we get here in the Netherlands, and I've spent a lot of time there, in the far north and the far south.

The various councils spend more money on settling claims by people from damage caused to vehicles from poor roads than they do actually maintaining the roads in the first place. Decades of poor maintenance and underfunding have left most councils in a bad position now, they are locked in a cycle they can't easily get out of without a massive spending spree they can't afford. Of course it does not help matters that by no means all of the money paid in road tax is actually spent on looking after the roads, I can't remember what the last percentage figure for it was but it was quite low iirc.
 
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I hit a bad pothole over christmas. It was so bad it made the window wipers come on, the indicator lens in the wing fell out, the damper is leaking oil and the wheel had a buckle bad enough to let air escape.

I dread to imagine if the passenger airbag was to go off because they regularly break the windscreen when they do deploy.

I reported it but aint heard anything back yet.
 
ive claimed in the past against surrey council, took photos just like you did and included all the info they wanted, and they want everything, MOT, proof of tax, servicing, v5 etc, took a good 4 months before I got my cheque
 
Why were you driving so close to the edge of the road? The worn areas of tarmac where the majority of drivers position their vehicles is clearly visible, but it you drove about a foot to the left of everyone else. Why?
 
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