Pothole

Here we go:

It's really not a slope to the left hand side of the picture, that's just a vertical drop!

Report it to the local council and accept NO excuses. They will whine, scream, whinge, make excuses ......... but persist and you can win. The "killer blow" for me was when they admitted they knew about it and hadn't fixed it. (They claimed that because the knew about it they didn't have to fix it!)

Brian

Wouldn't you have been better kicking out (or any other acceptable method, old rag acting as a mop would be equal substitue) the water out of the hole, given the consideration to your damages?

In my own humble opinion looks like a picture of some pothole, but of non-specific depth to me ( could be quite shallow) because the water is raising it flush with the road, obviously. If you could empty the water from the hole wouldn't it give a better measure of distance? Also wouldn't a tape measure inside the hole be a good idea perhaps, photographed to give some indication of depth ?

Just my thoughts, but to be honest you may not have had time to give it serious thought and its easy for me to pay lip service to this subject in the comfortable and "relatively" stress-free environment (reference reader to SWMBO) I am in ... (well now I have finished screwing around with Satellite dishes up on a ladder and learning about the principles of how to work amalgamating tape, certainly more true).

I had a damged wheel a few months back in summer, took loads of pics etc etc, sent them on cd with a letter....told them i would have em in court....ok the pot holes are marked with yellow to be sorted, so they knew about em;

they offerd me half at first, so i told them i wanted the wheel and tyre back, as they held on to it to take a look.. they then came back with 3/4 of the bill for a tyre and wheel...so i took it, as a few days later after that first incident, i had a typre blow out cos of a nail and pulled me into the kerb and destroyed 2 others...slight dents

I noticed on ebay, the same wheel is always offered, it seems they buckle easy, cos the tyre place showed me the biggest pile of bent alloys i had ever seen, always on the inside cos of the lack of support.

dont take no for a answer

Yep, it certainly would. But as I stated, when I went back 15 minutes later with a proper camera, the hole had been filed in!

I take it I don't really have much course of action then? It was a deep hole for at least 1 day, and I'm sure it wasn't just me affected. Bollocks.

Newer photos here:

Cars in the local garage currently. I had a check about myself, it doesn't look good. The passenger side really took a heavy bashing by both wheels going in and out of the hole, and I wasn't at crawling pace either, as was just about to brake gently for the empty roundabout ahead.

Woe is me.

Sorry, I am not a legal standpoint on this just a regular punter with an opinion on your situation, don't get me wrong.

Yes, your later pictures are excellent, much better detail on the problem and obvious to anyone looking at them that the council has bodged it up and they know it.

I think your chances are probably reasonable to good to get some kind of damages. Good luck.

Hey no worries, I was just commenting to make sure it was obvious what happened. Potholes generally don't bother me, but thing was surprisingly deep from anything I've seen on our normally pretty good roads around this area.

Garage say nothing is wrong, except tracking/alignement and a new wheel required, didn't sound like that to me, but perhaps it's just taking a good bashing, which is maybe required now and again. We'll see.

Even though they filled it look at the pile of stuff ejected from the hole before they filled it. Would prove it's been there a while for it to be throw to the side of the road.

Mark S.

Hmm..

I wonder if the council knew about it earlier, came out and put a cone there while they went back for more tarmac, the cone got belted by another car and pushed away from the hole, then you hit it?

It would explain why they managed to fill it so quickly, and why there was a cone 'just lying about'.

Doesn't help with the wheel, though.

Write to the council, don't ring them. If it isn't written down, it didn't happen...

I record calls such as that, trust nobody :-)

You're right in some deparments, the cone was nearby due to flooding nearby, so I nicked one of them, and rearranged the others which still offered not enough space at all for a car (or motorbike for that matter) to go by them. I took a broken one, it wasn't just lying beside the hole, it was about 50 metres away, but I'm more considerate than some people.

I don't think the council bothered their bahookie until an actual repair-company came out to fill it. Do the council do evaluation of potholes etc before filling, or just send a third party company in the hope the phone calls were correct?

Don't write to the council. Ring the council and find out who deals with the maintenance of that road at the council *highways* department. These are the people who look after the roads/pavements. They will invariable sub-contract this to a third party whom they pay to monitor the roads and fix the holes. It is them who you will be passed to to make a claim. You should be sent quite a simple form to fill in - it's useful at this point if you have a quote for the repair of the vehicle (1). It's normally settled very quickly - as if it's not your next stop is the small claims court and none of the parties involved wants that.

(1) I say this - but my experience was that I had had the vehicle assessed and repaired more or less immediately, but the subcontract company (Amey Mouchel) for the bit of road that I had this happen on still paid up. In my case the pothole broke the anti-roll bar mounts on my Nissan, and buggered a wheel/tyre. I had it repaired, they asked me to send them the garage bill, they sent me a cheque about a week later - job done.

Hope you get on well!

Cheers Dan.