Words cannot even begin to explain my anger.

[Acheron]

Monday morning, on the way to work in the rain, at about 6:30am. It was dark, cold and wet, and i get onto a main(ish) road round the corner from my house. Single carriage way, but a little bit of a country b road because thats where i live.

About 500 yards down, BANG! With the exception of a collision, the single loudest noise in a car i've ever heard. I'd hit a pothole with the n/s/f wheel, a pothole about the size of the moon.

I pull over straight away and assumed i'd got away with it. Quick visual check seemed ok, i was expecting a bent and destroyed wheel/tyre. I simply just didnt see it, it was on the ouside of a bend on a part of the road not very well lit, and the weather meant i didnt see it at all either.

All was fine for the rest of the day, tuesday, went into work and thought the car was pulling a bit but unsure if my imagination, didnt think much of it.

Wednesday, car not used.

Thursday night (last night), driving to work at 10:30, knew something was not right. It was pulling very very badly to the left and there was a horrible vibration at 50mph and above. Decided i was going to take the wheel off today to check it.

This morning at 7am after work, tyre pretty much flat. Take the wheel off to put the spare (space saver, yuck!) on and nothing a massive dent in the back of the wheel, obviously from the impact the other day.

Mondeo ST220 with those fancy expensive tyres and wheels. Now totally fked thanks to these st roads.

Ironically, the council came the day after i hit it and repaired the big pothole.

Do i stand any chance at all in terms of complaing or claiming off the council for this? if i was a biker and had come off, i could have been killed.

My only concern is that they're going to query why it took 3-4 days for it to toally become apparent the wheel was fked and try and pass the blame off some other way.

Any help please??

Edited by Acheron on Friday 21st January 15:10

[Acheron]

Error - multipost.

Edited by Acheron on Friday 21st January 15:20

[snowy slopes]

AFAIK the council wont pay for the damage. It has been tried loads of times, and every time i think they use the act of god defence. He made it snow and freeze, creating the pothole, so sue Him will be there answer i guess. Sorry

[RobM77]

Yes is the short answer to your question. A huge pot hole wrecked a tyre on my car in March last year, and I got about 90% of the value of the tyre back from the council. Initially, the offer was about 75% based on an average car's annual mileage etc, but I contested each of their points because my car was very low mileage, and they upped their offer to around 90%. If you call the council up they'll send you a claim form in the post to fill in. They'll make you photocopy your insurance, MoT, repair invoice etc (probably just to put you off), but I think the form plus all that took me about 30 minutes, and then my appeal to their standard letter took another 15 minutes. Not bad for £200; in your case much more.

Edited by RobM77 on Friday 21st January 15:14

Edited by RobM77 on Friday 21st January 15:15

[Hitch78]

One of those things - get on ebay and get on with your life

[rhinochopig]

Just bad luck. They came and repaired it quickly, and TBF, most roads are sporting some lovely big craters following our recent snow and frost.

[anonymous-user]

Acheron said:

Ironically, the council came the day after i hit it and repaired the big pothole.

If the council knew about it beforehand but hadn't repaired it before you hit it then you might have a chance.

[Number 7]

If it was repaired the next day, that would suggest that they already new about it before your incident (unless you reported it yourself). If so, they may be liable. You need to ascertain at what point they became aware of the hole.

[Acheron]

Number 7 said:

If it was repaired the next day, that would suggest that they already new about it before your incident (unless you reported it yourself). If so, they may be liable. You need to ascertain at what point they became aware of the hole.

Thats going to be my argument, it was obviously one of the worse ones for them to fix it quickly, but no suggestion of barriers, signs or cones etc made it dangerous.

[littleandy0410]

I'm sure I've seen on here before, a website called www.potholes.co.uk, which has loads of info on how to claim, etc. Never used it myself, so can't comment on how helpful it is.

[Gillet]

Definately question it with the council, and DO NOT give up. I had something similar in 2009, took me 9 months to get anything but I ended up with a cheque for £400.
Definately take the route that if they filled it in it was obviously a problem worthy of compensation.

And again - don't give up, I was getting no where after 8 months so I simply took the Shawshank Redemption approach and sent them a letter every day, after the 20th letter they gave in and I got my money.

[Baryonyx]

I can imagine how angry you are in your shoes, especially wrecking a wheel and tyre like that. If worst comes to worst, you can always trawl Ebay and scrapyards for a diesel ST and just buy a wheel or two from that.

[oldcynic]

Go after the council. You can't be expected to call them / write to them the moment the damage occurs. Informing them within 7 days is entirely reasonable, and there is no reason to advise them that it took 3 days for you to realise.

Once they've paid for your replacement wheel take the bent one to a good wheel refurb place to see if they can do anything with it - I had an alloy straightened for £30 but it wasn't too bad to start with. I also picked up an unused replacement for about £95 off ebay - considerably cheaper than the Seat official price of £450. It had been paid for by a local council following pothole damage - I assume the claimant had just got the original straightened and got on with life, before eventually selling the car and ebaying the extra wheel.

[Acheron]

Here's the damage

[Acheron]

Just spoke to the council, going to send me out a claim form :/

[FraserLFA]

snowy slopes said:

AFAIK the council wont pay for the damage. It has been tried loads of times, and every time i think they use the act of god defence. He made it snow and freeze, creating the pothole, so sue Him will be there answer i guess. Sorry

I've heard that they set aside money each year for just such an occassion. If you can prove it's deeper than 4 inches and wider than 6 (Or something like that) ten you have a good chance of claiming. They've even been known to pay out for 4 new alloys if they can't get a singular one.

[Mermaid]

Why I keep putting off that Porsche GT3 purchase - too many potholes, and till Mrs Cameron & Mrs Clegg suffer huge damage to their cars, nothing is going to change.

[Number 7]

FraserLFA said:

I've heard that they set aside money each year for just such an occassion. If you can prove it's deeper than 4 inches and wider than 6 (Or something like that) ten you have a good chance of claiming. They've even been known to pay out for 4 new alloys if they can't get a singular one.

I get the impression that some councils take a commercial view - sometimes it costs less paying the claims than filling the holes.

[HellDiver]

Thats only a dink. Get it rebalanced and get on with your life.

[Mermaid]

Number 7 said:

I get the impression that some councils take a commercial view - sometimes it costs less paying the claims than filling the holes.

Correct, because they know motorists are an apathetic lot - will not complain about the existence of a pothole, and if they do one day suffer some damage will seek compensation.

Now if all motorists did the right thing, there wouldn't be any potholes because the Councils could not afford to leave them in such dangerous state. The fault is ours.