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Biffed a tyre yesterday and got a big bulge. Can see on the Council website that the hole was reported on the 21st and has just been allowed to get bigger, or, more likely, wasn't fixed properly so has been re-damaged.
Yes, I'm a shit driver, but in my defence it was hidden under a puddle and when I went back to take a photo of it a van and a car both went down in a deeper part of it than I did!
Claims process is pretty convoluted - https://www.potholes.co.uk/claims/step_by_step_guide
Anyone done it?
Two mates of mine have successfully claimed. Was a PITA and the council made it as difficult as possible, but if you persevere then you should succeed.
However I got a letter from my insurance company yesterday saying they pothole damage claims will no longer affect my no claims bonus, so if you fail to get anywhere with the council then maybe your insurance company can help. It'll cost you excess but that should be less than a new wheel and tyre.
Interesting, thanks. Wheel is ok (well, I couldn't feel anything when driving). Pirelli tyres are even pricier than Maxxis MTB ones though!
Yes, I’m a shit driver, but in my defence it was hidden under a puddle and when I went back to take a photo of it a van and a car both went down in a deeper part of it than I did!
Doesn't make you a shit driver. I've seen a few huge potholes recently at fast/busy junctions that are very hard to spot in the dark (the first time you encounter them anyway), as you need almost all your focus on the flow of traffic.
I hit a pothole and destroyed a two week old £120 tyre several years ago. The council kicked back but after a bit of faff agreed to pay 50% of the costs.
Broke a rear spring after hitting a huge one on the M5, so it was Highways England who I had to deal with, didn't make it easy and when they agreed to pay they applied a standard 50% reduction to to the repair bill for previous wear and tear on the spring, shysters.
Same here, busted spring(rear) and 1 tyre of Highways (natch) G'urland.
PITA, but persist and you should come away with being well and truly put in your place.
I too got 50% of the bill..
Doesn’t make you a shit driver.
Just anticipating the response from the 'STW Gods' 😉 (I am though and I don't care)
I'd like to thank all the drivers that don't look far enough ahead of themselves to try avoid the pot holes. This lack of observation is causing my community tax to rise as these drivers then claim money from the local council for their self inflicted tyre damage. Sighs...........
🙂
My pleasure piha. Ya dick.
My pleasure piha. Ya dick.
Pothole you say?
I really feel your pain.
I hit a pothole 7 weeks ago today, it was between those annoying yellow lines across the road to make you slow down (I was only doing 40 in a 60 zone before anyone says "well why didn't you slow down" 😉 ) Blew out my tyre instantly, and then found out that it had bent the wheel beyond repair when I took it to get a new tyre. Cost me over £1,100 for the new wheel and tyre.
Still waiting to hear if my claim has gone through. Glad I have dash cam footage of the incident as hopefully that will back it up enough. Only had the car a few months at the time and 4,000 miles on the clock.
The roads are shocking at the moment.
fasthaggis
Member
"This issue has been investigated, risk assessed and recorded in line with our Maintenance Strategy as not requiring immediate action at this time."
Not just potholes but cars swerving to avoid them have hit my OS wing mirror twice on the same stretch of road. I've stopped using that road now.
Have noticed that the roads in the UK are in a right 2n8....
Yay austerity!
Better roads in Poland and even Italy!
Well, to make this political this current bunch of shisters say they’ve budgeted £6bn into road repairs.. which is horse rap because that budget also includes rebuilding those “smart” motorways.. so effectively sweeet FA is going into local roads.
You voted them in, suffer like the rest of us.
I'll swear the roads are worse this winter than last winter.
Used the A120 on Tuesday, thats a 70mph dual carriageway, the pot holes were huge, many could not be avoided due to the heavy traffic all around, and due to the spray making for poor visibility speeds were down to <60 anyway.
Why doesn't the water drain off properly anymore? Lots of places where the road was flooded and IMO dangerous.
“This issue has been investigated, risk assessed and recorded in line with our Maintenance Strategy as not requiring immediate action at this time.”
"A huge hole has appeared. The council is looking into it."
The claim for my clubmate is likely to empty the pothole road maintenance fund for Surrey Council. I'm expecting a six figure settlement. It won't bring him back though 🙁
Claimed for a broken Open Pro wheel from Hillingdon, who were happy to pay - and fill the hold when I said it was a danger in the dark on a lane ridden by cyclists frequently. Was brand new too, having just been replaced after I broke the previous rim riding down a lane.
how are people not seeing potholes?
Agree with Piha (and bigjim) it's our council tax paying to fix the cars of people who.aren't paying enough attention. That £1100 someone mentioned is enough to fix four potholes properly or bodge about thirty. Also I'm guessing that £1100 for a wheel and tyre indicates some sort of low profile thing which is probably prone to damage on potholes...
If you can't/don't spot an obstacle you need points on your licence for careless driving not compensation
A pot hole is not an obstacle its an impairment on the road
how are people not seeing potholes?
Seeing does not mean able to react unless you think we should all do emergency stops and swerves for pot holes.
I dont know where you drive but i drive all over the county and the quality of roads is very variable. No one can avoid all the potholes on a road they have never driven before. To suggest you deserve a banning is internet hyperbole.
My bike is even sower and again riding new roads its just not possible to avoid all potholes- if you can you are not more skilled than me just much slower 😉
Claimed twice off Edinburgh city council, no problems. Was 4 or 5 years ago now.
Claimed for two new tyres and a bent suspension thing, proper faff, lots of back and forth but managed to get the price of used bits off of Birmingham City Council a couple of years ago. Which would be fine if we'd known at the time but the garage thoughtlessly repaired them with new bits, so inconsiderate... 🙂
No-one drives through a deep hole through choice - the road what done ours was very wide but regularly flooded for weeks at a time over winter back then. The crown was ok but massive holes lurked unseen either side of that, so when we had to edge over for a car coming the other way, boom. Road closed, drainage sorted and road resurfaced right after our little biff - they knew it was dangerous.
[quote="bigjimthedrivinghero"]how are people not seeing potholes?
Jeez, didn't I cover this in the OP? Cos I'm not a massive driving GOD like yourself and andrewh.
But at least I can ****ing READ eh?
@retro83...They fixed that hole in 2 days !! The UK should hire Japanese road crews,they would have all our roads repaired in a month 😉
All levels of government are broke. They can't afford to keep roads in good condition and no one gets voted in on the basis they will raise taxes to pay for it. Existing budgets are being swallowed up by claims and by private contractors who take the piss as hardly any of their work gets inspected. Better get used to it as it won't be getting better anytime soon. Best you can hope for is that they manage the decline but even that is wishfull thinking. Switch to smaller diameter wheels and higher volume tyres to soak up some of the bumps and they're cheaper to replace as well.
The roads do some in poor condiicon just now - the A9 has some mega holes in it, and that's the main road north/south for a big chunk of Scotland.
That said, I'm not sure I'm cool with councils paying out £1100 to fix someone's wheel. If I really wanted to buy a car with stupid low profile tyres, I'd see blowing them up in potholes as being an interent risk - like mashing a splitter off a speed bump if I bought something stupidly low.
That £1100 now won't be fixing any potholes. Great.
A well timed headline at the Echo on this subject.
Better roads in Italy? You must be joking. I've driven in Italy a few times and the roads are pretty crap. Not better than UK roads under normal circumstances. The roads are particularly crap at the moment due to the weather we've had. I've also driven in Montreal where the seasonal temps go from minus 40 in winter to plus 30 in summer and guess what the typical Montreal driver complains about continually....the state of their roads.
The sheer task ahead of the councils now to address all the potholes that have appeared over the past few months is huge and will take time...not a question of money it's just a challenge to get around them all in a reasonable time.
Some people just love to claim from the council. Like for tripping up on uneven paving slabs for example - maybe people should pay better attention to where they're walking rather than looking at their phones or chit-chatting with someone. We seem to be heading towards a society where everything has to be someones fault and someone else has be be liable to pay. Not a great state of affairs IMO.
I don't think it's unreasonable to claim for damage caused by an unrepaired hole that the council are aware of. Fiat Panda in our case, nothing low profile or expensive about those wheels, the ding in the rim got tapped back out.
“A well timed headline at the Echo on this subject”
Yeah, HCC -thats who my claim will be with. Trouble is, they never FIX the holes. Just send some dope out with a bucket of tar and a shovel. Must cost them more going round doing every pothole 2or 3 times than doing it properly in the first place. I wrote to them ages ago about a road they’d surface dressed which was actually made worse, because the visible holes were still there but now hidden. Got some bullshit reply back.
Anyway, I’m claiming £60, not a grand.
Hi! 9 months later, after my claim was passed from the council to an insurance co and from there onto a contractor (and I guess their insurance company), I've just received a reply to say they will pay up in full for my busted tyre. Which is nice.
(Below follows some replies to the original posted enquiry...)
Well done on persevering Dez. My cycling friend claimed against HCC for failing to fill a pothole despite the Council being told by residents that cyclists were getting injured. Fortunately she had CTC insurance but what's so bloody stupid is the cost to the NHS of multiple visits to about 10 different consultants and GPs as well as MRIs, x-rays etc. That's before the cost of her bike, clothing, accessories, cost of getting to appointments as she couldn't travel alone so expenses for her partner too. HCC clearly haven't learned their lesson despite paying out a substantial amount.
My councils' insurance company have just knocked back my £910 claim for two wheels and one tyre from fitting a pothole 6 months ago, although they did say that I could continue in the small claims court.
On what basis sharkbait?
Would you have seen it if you had used main beams?
When the area was last routinely inspected on the 20-04-2018, prior to your incident, the defect in question was either not apparent or actionable at that time and no reports/complaints of the defect in question (Fell within Asset Locn: C22/05) were made to our client prior to your incident.
^ According to this they had fulfilled their duties and therefore not liable.
I claimed for damage caused to my bike after hitting a submerged pothole.
Total claim was about £130 to cover a replacement rim, blown inner tube and the labour costs for my LBS sorting out the wheel.
Sent a detailed letter to the council setting out the circumstances of the accident and including a map of the location and photos of the pothole including measurements. Paid in full by Durham County Council without argument.
sharkbait - is there any way of seeing a physical copy of their report ie is anything published online? 'Scuse my cynicism but wouldn't take their word for it. Perhaps get your MP involved?
Actually I've just been looking at the site history report for this road and there was a report back in february of damage caused by a pothole very very near the one I hit, there was also another report of damage caused 2 weeks after my report and this is def the same pot hole.
Google maps also shows damage to exactly the same piece of road dating back to 2012!
Time to chase this up.
Oooh, sounds promising. Good luck!
We had a pothole here in Norfolk that due to poor repairs would open every year, it was so bad in February and elderly cyclist broke his leg and locals placed two car tyres in it to lessen the blow, it was that big, council knocked back claim, but he got statements from local residents as to the number of times they had reported it and the poor repairs done each time were documented and took it to Court and won
I’ve had wheels wrecked by potholes, but unfortunately I either couldn’t attribute it to a specific hole, or had the same boilerplate reply that sharkbait received, and got nowhere.
Would you have seen it if you had used main beams?
Yes! If I'd had those new fangled see-under-water-round-corners-daylight-enhancing LEDs. Most definitely.
Thst's the kicker - if it got reported and not repaired, the game's afoot! 🙂
Would you have seen it if you had used main beams?
Yes! If I’d had those new fangled see-under-water-round-corners-daylight-enhancing LEDs. Most definitely.
If it had been bigger than a horse do you think you would have seen it?
Seriously, try claiming. Councils try to make it hard to dissuade people, however, if you have some evidence and stand your ground...
Not nice to see the victim blaming here.
Anyway....
We have a pot hole at the bottom of our close.
Routinely gets filled a couple of times a year, reappears within days each time.
It's almost like an old friend now.
Not nice to see the victim blaming here.
😄
Seriously, try claiming
Seriously, try [url= https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/pothole-damage-anyone-successfully-claimed/#post-10420253 ]reading more than the first and last post.[/url]
I did, I simply summarised encouraging you to do so with evidence.
One of these should get the sand out.
I posted up about claiming for an Alpha rim that got damaged in a rain-filled pothole a few years ago.
I got way more flaming than Dezb! The riding Gods were out in force that day.
I just noticed the dates oops!😳
Oh and I missed the post where Debs claimed ( I’m gonna blame the ads!)
@ DezB - well done you! 😉