Pot Hole kills tire

Borzoi

So I'm going home last night from work in the dark and the rain, hit a pot hole hard. Immediately I hear the hissing of air, and start to loose the steering. Nurse the car off the main road and under a street lamp to change the tire on the front passenger side.

This morning I get the tire dropped in to a puncture repair shop - they won't touch it as there is a chunk out of the side wall.

So I have to buy a new tyre at €140 to replace one that is barely six months old. This lunchtime I will be mostly out by the pothole with my digital camera taking pictures of the offending pothole, as I intend to put in a claim against Dublin city council

Kaskade

The roads in this country are a disgrace, Its almost impossible to run lower than a 50 profile tyre.

I encountered three cars changing wheels beside the one pothole in Galway one evening. As far as I know they will only allow your claim if the council caused the pot hole for example through recent poorly finished repair work

If the huge taxes that motorists are paying was invested back into the roads they would be an awful lot safer
Good luck with the claim,

mike65

Borzoi good luck with your claim but as said above you will only suceed if the pot hole was filled but badly and the material came out (if there's fresh crumbly tarmac by the hole you may get somewhere) but you should try and embarrass the local authority into fixing the hole
anyway...If you crashed into another vehicle could you sue....? Nope! The law sucks as it protects public bodies from being held resposible for thier actions/incations.

Mike.

DMC

Where in the city is the hole, Borzoi? Just so others can avoid. There is a real nasty one at the Big Tree heading up the NCR to Phibsboro. A real puncture burster.

Capt'n Midnight

I had thought you could only claim if the pothole had already been reported..

Victor

Have you actually reported the pothole to the area engineer?

wolfman

Had a NASTY experience last week myself with a ****ing terrible hole on the Clonshaugh back road from the Malahide Rd up to Northside shopping centre. I'm sure a lot of you know the road...................

Point is!

SO DO I!! I drive it 3 or 4 times a week going up from Laois to see the mother in law, but yet the other night, I was driving the road, met a van, hit the hole and destroyed my alloy wheel on the car and damaged the brake callipers also!

Pathetic little country
:mad:

louie

I had the same experience myself before Christmas.
My tyre has a hole in it the size of my fist and the alloy wheels is damaged.
I wrote to the South Dublin Council to claim for the tyre & alloy. I'll let you know how I got on.

ando

Originally posted by wolfman
Had a NASTY experience last week myself with a ****ing terrible hole on the Clonshaugh back road from the Malahide Rd up to Northside shopping centre. I'm sure a lot of you know the road...................

Yes and Yes :rolleyes:

ColinM

Originally posted by Kaskade
The roads in this country are a disgrace

Totally agree. I get more and more frustrated every day that every road I drive on is basically fecked, for want of a better word. To say the surface is uneven and pot-holed doesn't really describe it. All the roads in the city centre are in rag order, and country lanes are being used by volumes of traffic to avoid over congested dual carriageways that should be upgraded to dual carriageways themselves, or at the very least given a proper bed and asphalt surface. I remember being told that only a very small percentage of the road tax we pay is actually spent on the roads. There are countless roads I know where huge craters of potholes have existed for years and nothing is ever done about them.

I remember asking someone who was quite informed about the road laws whether the council is liable if you damage your car by driving into a pothole, and he told me that if they attempt to fix the pothole but it still damages your car then you may have a case alright, but if they never attempt to fix it and the pothole has been there for a significant amount of time already, then it can be considered to be like a "fixture" or "feature" of the road and so this absolves them from responsibility. Now I can't say for sure if this is true, but if it is, it means that this would encourage them to never bother trying to fix any potholes.

I can't think of anywhere in Dublin right now that has a nice smooth flat surface free of any holes all the way to the kerb.

Seth Brundle

Originally posted by ColinM
I can't think of anywhere in Dublin right now that has a nice smooth flat surface free of any holes all the way to the kerb.

Can such a world exist? It would be so magical.
Seriously though, the utility companies (and their contractors) pay stupidly small sums of money to the local authorities to compensate for digging up the roads. There should be a huge fine placed upon the companies to pay for reinstatement works. Course in this poxy place nothing will be as it should!

sceptre

I thought (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that the utility companies were required to repair the road as it was before digging it up on completion of their work and that the compo they give the corpo is for inconvenience only. Yes, I realise that they don't bother - "as it was before" in my book would equal me not being able to tell it was dug up rather than noticing a big bump running along the road a mile out of Limerick city centre (where the roads are terrible by the way). Recognising that they don't bother, am I wrong in thinking they're required to do this?

I agree with Colin's last post by the way (who wouldn't - it makes sense). AFAIR he's correct in the legal position with regard to repairs. In the UK (specifically England and Wales) it's different - there the local council are responsible for damage caused to cars after a reasonable time after they've been informed of any dodgy parts of the road under their care.

ColinM

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7054-705109,00.html
Council offices nationwide [the UK] are besieged by aggrieved car drivers, motorbike riders, cyclists and pedestrians making claims for injuries or damage to their vehicles caused by potholes.

Has anyone ever successfully sued Dublin Corporation or any county council in Ireland for damage to their vehicle caused by potholes? If not, why not? They're in dire need of a good sueing IMFO! In other words, I think they need a kicking in order to get them to wake up to the fact that the roads can't continue to be left neglected like they are.

Oh, and I'm not talking about whole families of knackers all tripping and falling over a crack in the pavement on the same day and making fradulent claims.

ColinM

Even if road authorities are indeed "immune" from prosecution in Ireland, if anyone is feeling angry enough to try to make a claim through genuine damage caused by a pothole, here's the procedure in the UK:

Motorists must keep claiming to press home the point. “It is definitely worth appealing but at times you might feel as though you’re bashing your head against a brick wall,” says Paul Watters, the AA’s head of roads and transport.

HOW TO MAKE A CLAIM

Take a photograph of the pothole with a ruler alongside so that its size is clearly shown Note its location and try to find a witness — possibly a resident or shopkeeper — who can confirm how long it has been there Provide evidence of the damage to your vehicle — you’ll need proof that it wasn’t caused by wear and tear Write to the relevant highway authority: in London, if it’s a main road that will be Transport for London rather than the council The highway authority’s defence will be that it has an inspection system in place but that it can’t check all the roads all the time You can beat this defence if you can prove the council already knew about the pothole, ie, that someone had notified it and it hadn’t acted, or that its repair was defective Seek legal advice: councils are notoriously difficult to deal with and rarely disclose the necessary documents about maintenance, etc, without a struggle Be prepared for a long fight

Victor

Originally posted by kbannon
Can such a world exist? It would be so magical.
Seriously though, the utility companies (and their contractors) pay stupidly small sums of money to the local authorities to compensate for digging up the roads. There should be a huge fine placed upon the companies to pay for reinstatement works. Course in this poxy place nothing will be as it should!

That is changing under the Communications Act with Dublin City Council putting in place a scheme whereby the digger-upper has to maintain that piece of road for 18 months after the digging up, cover any compensation claims and pay towards longterm damage (two pieces of asphalt will deteriorate quicker than one). The next stage will be to make them bear the full economic cost of longterm damage and possibly lane charging (to make them get on with teh job as quickly as possible and avoid peak traffic flow disturbance).