£1.8 million compensation for one pothole

[DonPeffers]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/863204/pothole-damage-claim-council-pays-1-8-million-somerset

Wow!

[John K]

It must have caused an accident that left someone needing life long care.

But everything is a calculation now.  Bet it would cost them 10 mil to fix them all, so by their maths, they are still ahead

[jeff oakley]

I think you are right John that the accident must have left someone needing life long 24 hour care. But I suspect that to fix all the potholes would cost a lot more than 10 mill.

It is one of my pet hates that councils let utilities dig up the road and make a good road into a bad one due to the quality of the repairs. A small hole made to repair a water pipe, is quickly filled and tarmacked over. Give it two months it has sunk and now holds water, in another two months it is breaking up, but they never get the people back to fix it properly. If they fined them for every one that was substandard they would do a better job.

If you hit one automatically they go into denial mode and you have to fight to get anything. They make it so hard that people give up so why fix everything?

 

[Thrustyjust]

Driving along a road under Wokingham District Council. They close it and divert the traffic down a narrow single track lane. As it was narrow ( road closed was a typical 2 way traffic road) , vehicles have gone up the banks and washed the road in mud and water. So, I hit a hidden pothole and damage my rim and split the tyre. Conversation goes like this

Me. Hi, I have just damaged my car on a pothole on X road, after you diverted traffic

WBC . Sorry you cant have

Me. Well it definately was on that road, I had to change the wheel

WBC. Well, we checked that road 6 months ago and it was fine, so you didnt............... goodbye..........

So, moral of the story, they will usually deny all interest in anyone making a claim . One of my colleagues spent 18 months claiming for a replacement alloy wheel on his company car, just out of principal He had it replaced by our company. He was in a long line of cars replacing wheels after a pothole appeared. Weirdly the next morning it was filled in. Which then made the council say that the pothole never existed. 

[Blatman]

2 hours ago, jeff oakley said:

If you hit one automatically they go into denial mode and you have to fight to get anything. They make it so hard that people give up so why fix everything?

That depends on how the council is approached.

I holed the sump on the Cossie in London on a piece of raised ironwork. Took pictures, got the car AA'd home, got three quotes and presented them to the council in question. Their first response was to try to blame contractors. I said no, they were the Principal, the contractors are a third party and of no interest to me. The final paragraph said they had 28 days to pay or I would see them in the small claims court. 10 days later I had a cheque with the whole process from bang to back on the road taking 6 weeks.

I made an effort to learn how to effectively go about making the claim successful and was lucky enough to get some very sage advice. The small claims court can be a powerful weapon, even if you never go anywhere near one. Be polite and reasonable and there is very little that can be done to prevent a successful action. Reasonable is key because these are civil issues and in a court the test of reasonable-ness is applied rather than beyond reasonable doubt. If you are reasonable I'll bet 10-1 that at least once council bod won't be and from then on, they lose. Or put another way, give them enough rope to hang themselves... Then the amount by which they lose is really up to them. And be prepared to strike a deal. For example, offer to waive some out-of-pocket expenses or perhaps offer to pay an equivalent of your own insurance excess as a gesture of good will in return for an early settlement. Tell them the offer is time limited and once the deadline passes you will claim the full amount. I've won more than the case above in this fashion so believe me when I say this approach really works. They may not care about potholes or whatever but they do care about their bottom line.

[Wilfman]

It beats me why utilities can’t  go in the grass verges half the time...... still get a lane coned off for the work, and disruption, but the road doesn’t sink after. 

[Blatman]

1 minute ago, Wilfman said:

It beats me why utilities can’t  go in the grass verges half the time...... still get a lane coned off for the work, and disruption, but the road doesn’t sink after. 

Depends where you live. In London and surrounding areas much of the utilities are Victorian or Edwardian and they were in the verges. Then many of the roads got widened...

[Wilfman]

8 hours ago, Blatman said:

Depends where you live. In London and surrounding areas much of the utilities are Victorian or Edwardian and they were in the verges. Then many of the roads got widened...

I agree in large towns and cities it’s difficult but in rural areas they still insist on digging the road surface up. It has recently happened on the A556 to Chester....... HUGE grass verges but, no, they went for the road.  

[jeff oakley]

I agree with you Blatters, but they did go into denial mode with you by trying to deflect the blame. You did everything right, you got photographs, got some sound advice and went straight for the 28 days or in court. At that point, the roads department would have made contact with the legal team who would advise if it was a winnable case. Some councils would take the easy and correct way to compensate rather than fight, others will fight everything fearing the flood gates being opened.

As for the later points on where they put utilities, they are still building them under roads even on new estates as this is the cheapest for all concerned when developing a site. I have no problem with then being under a road but make them repair the whole road properly and they would do it. 

Some of the roads around Bristol look like they have been carpet bombed due to all the digging up and bad repairs done.

[DonPeffers]

Not pothole related but a while back an ex-colleague told me one day in town, because of roadworks, he and everyone else were forced to drive into the bus lane and he later received a fine for driving in the bus lane when prohibited. Apparently on that day the Council had issued 2,000 fines when usually it's about 40. Luckily my ex-colleague had stored dashcam footage to prove his assertion that the bus lane could not be avoided and the fine was cancelled.

[John K]

I have to be super discrete here (NDA's are a b***h)  but you might want to look up what dimensions class as a pothole in your region.

You will be surprised if not horrified.

Personally I would class HE's dimensions as a meteor impact crater... Like the one that killed the dinosaurs... 

[Blatman]

7 hours ago, jeff oakley said:

I agree with you Blatters, but they did go into denial mode with you by trying to deflect the blame.

Fair point. One of the things I have learned in the last 10 years and reinforced even more in the last 5 or 6 is to question everything and then try to verify the answers given. It's amazing how many times I've caught people trying to wing it. In short, trust no-one, question everything, verify the answers. It can get a little tedious, but it can be well worth the effort.

[Lawrie]

My wife had a letter from the council's insurers saying that they'd complied with their obligations and weren't liable.  It may have suggested that they inspect the roads (at 40mph) once in a blue moon.  The councils always seem to have money for their pet projects, but never enough for the roads.  I'm between two local councils.  One is good and one's like North Korea.

[jeff oakley]

I am not sure if this is true, but a road engineer told me that the inspections of roads and the condition of them was also linked to the speed limit. The higher the speed the better they must be maintained and inspected. 

This, he claimed was why huge areas had blanket reductions on limits and huge decline in the condition of the roads.

[John K]

36 minutes ago, jeff oakley said:

I am not sure if this is true, but a road engineer told me that the inspections of roads and the condition of them was also linked to the speed limit. The higher the speed the better they must be maintained and inspected. 

This, he claimed was why huge areas had blanket reductions on limits and huge decline in the condition of the roads.

I dunno, to make that work, you would need a DB of every defect on every road and to be able to run simulations of any impact of changes to speed limits against maintainable defects.

All sounds a bit SciFi to me...