Potholed......

rolf_f

Coming round a corner today, not at any great speed, I hit a pothole. Result = both front and rear, very tough Spa Cycles touring wheels (Rigida Snyper rims) wrecked - rims on one side both folded in - the back wheel is now flat spotted and took the hit worse than the front.....

How one pothole managed to take out two very tough touring wheels that should be able to survive a fully laden touring bike on poor roads is anyones guess but that's Leeds CC road maintenance for you.

The road is a heavily used main route (urban B road) through a busy suburb- so what I my odds on the Council paying up for their slackness?

rjsterry

Seems to hinge on whether the pothole had been previously reported - i.e. did they know about it and do nothing?

jonny_trousers

Unlucky Rolf!

Speaking of potholes, anyone had any experience of reporting them and getting a worthwhile result? There's an epic pothole on Waterloo Bridge northbound that gets filled in with something temporary every few weeks before opening up again and looking lethal. I know it's there so I can avoid it, but it's only a matter of time before some poor sod on a Brompton goes arse over tit because of it.

Kieran_Burns

You MUST go back and photograph the hole and have a reference measure (ideally a ruler) to show the size of it.

bails87

Kieran_Burns wrote:

You MUST go back and photograph the hole and have a reference measure (ideally a ruler) to show the size of it.

Or make do if you don't have a ruler to hand.

"No, really, it's at least nine inches even when it's cold, so that hole's about three feet wide....."

rolf_f

Kieran_Burns wrote:

You MUST go back and photograph the hole and have a reference measure (ideally a ruler) to show the size of it.

This I am doing this afternoon - no camera this morning as I forgot I'd left my phone on charge :roll:

I've got timely pics of the wheels.

One thing in my favour is that it must have been there for some time. There can be no arguments about freeze thaw as there hasn't been one day this year that I've seen road ice.

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Unlucky Rolf!

Thanks! I don't count myself too unlucky though - 20000 miles plus of commuting and road damage so far has been limited to this; £162 of wheel or not much more than a couple of tankfuls of petrol.

Still, if the councils would spend more on road repair and less on expensive digital signs telling you to put your seatbelt on, this sort of thing would happen more rarely.

fenboy369

I had a colege hit a pot hole two winters ago in Cambridge. He photographed it, and claimed for a new helmet and front light, the council sent him a cheque for £750 compensation. Take that photo!

bigmat

EDIT

Actually, I reported a pot hole last winter and was astonished to see it get fixed within a few weeks. Reported another one before Christmas which had caused my rear light to fall off and get crushed - got given the council's details to register a claim, did so and never heard back, so who knows...

W1

BigMat wrote:

Get a mate to report the pothole online (putting them on notice). Then defer reporting your incident for a couple of weeks. Unless they fix it in the meantime (which they won't) then you'll be laughing all the way to the bank. (I didn't just say any of that by the way!)

Actually, I reported a pot hole last winter and was astonished to see it get fixed within a few weeks. Reported another one before Christmas which had caused my rear light to fall off and get crushed - got given the council's details to register a claim, did so and never heard back, so who knows...

So you're proposing fraud? Nice.

rjsterry

Post deleted.

Specialized Needs

rjsterry wrote:

Seems to hinge on whether the pothole had been previously reported - i.e. did they know about it and do nothing?

And had 'reasonable' time to do anything about it.

Check fillthathole.org.uk. If it has been reported on there, you'll have some good, firm evidence to use.

W1

rjsterry wrote:

W1 wrote:

BigMat wrote:

Get a mate to report the pothole online (putting them on notice). Then defer reporting your incident for a couple of weeks. Unless they fix it in the meantime (which they won't) then you'll be laughing all the way to the bank. (I didn't just say any of that by the way!)

Actually, I reported a pot hole last winter and was astonished to see it get fixed within a few weeks. Reported another one before Christmas which had caused my rear light to fall off and get crushed - got given the council's details to register a claim, did so and never heard back, so who knows...

So you're proposing fraud? Nice.

<Joke detector is on|off>

at least I think he was joking, mine needs new batteries.

What is this joke thing you speak of?

You're right, only a brainless idiot would seriously advocate fraud in a permanent traceable format.

rolf_f

Come come, there'll be no trouble here............




I'll post some pics later......

bigmat

W1 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

W1 wrote:

BigMat wrote:

EDIT

Actually, I reported a pot hole last winter and was astonished to see it get fixed within a fd another one before Christmas which had caused my rear light to fall off and get crushed - got given the council's details to register a claim, did so and never heard back, so who knows...

So you're proposing fraud? Nice.

<Joke detector is on|off>

at least I think he was joking, mine needs new batteries.

What is this joke thing you speak of?

You're right, only a brainless idiot would seriously advocate fraud in a permanent traceable format.

It wasn't a serious suggestion. I wouldn't do it myself and wouldn't advocate others to do it. The second paragraph is the serious bit. Hope that clears things up for you.

rolf_f

Right ho!

Here we go.....

This is the offending item...... Not been reported on the obvious sites but, tbh, it is too narrow to upset a car with tyres wider than those of a 2CV so probably no surprise......



About 1 foot wide. Note how well worn the inner edges of the pothole are. This isn't recent.



At least 2 feet long (apologies for slightly crappy pics. The Lumix is a bit crap and it isn't easy taking pictures in the road next to a blind corner!). Still, if a car had caught me unawares, I could have always dived into the pothole for safety



And over 3 inches deep :shock:



I've worked out what happened now - normally I take the corner in primary at something around 20mph. You have to go primary as there is a patchwork of drain covers to avoid. This time, I was to the left a little due to a left turning car (plenty of space on the inside - eg enough for an Austin 7 let alone a bike). I never really noticed the pothole because I've always been well out from it and it is only in view normally for about 3 seconds as you round the corner. Today I was much slower (maybe 15mph) aiming to miss the very visible wet manhole cover by passing on the right but then hitting the pothole (which on a rainy day like this morning wasn't that visible). The pothole is below the red car - this morning the road was wet and dark and the manhole shiny.



I did speak to someone whilst I was taking pics who reckoned the pothole dated at least from last winter. However, the Google Street view image from July 2008 shows the pothole already beginning (at a poor quality patching) and that was before the very harsh winters of 2009 and 2010. This winter there has been no new freeze thaw damage that I can see. I can't see how this has been inspected since last winter or even prior to that.



Finally, what it did to the bike - front wheel less bad than the rear (unfortunately - as I have a useable spare for the front but I can manage on that anyway - it is the rear that keeps going "bump bump bump" on the tarmac and on the brakes. The bike feels better on rough surfaces now!!).

davis

That pothole is worse than the one that threw me off just over a year ago (hideous crash, much injury, chronic pain etc).

I'm genuinely glad that you escaped uninjured, and I believe from the photos you've shown that you've got enough evidence to get the council to a) pay for a new wheelset and b) repair the frigging road properly this time! I'd write them a letter, frankly; no real need to start with litigation in my eyes.

UndercoverElephant

It'll depend on the road, if it's a trunk road, you'll need to go after the Highway's agency, otherwise it's the council. Looks a bad hole, even by East Lothian standards. I had a similar one about two years back, wrecked the rim on my old Orbea and the council were a pain to try and extract money from. Worst comes to the worst, the rims are only £15 each and a rim replacement isn't exactly tricky on a well-made wheel.

JonS123

I managed to fall over on the same bit of road while walking home in the early hours of the morning back in December (mega bad black ice, a minicab managed to drive into a raised kerb just out of sight of the photo a few seconds after, just missing my legs )

I have reported the state of pot holes in Pudsey last year, but not that part of the road specifically, think that road is just a B road, though there are umpteen million busses that go on that bit of road every day, so can hardly be classed as a minor road

Jay dubbleU

Not so much a pothole - more of a chasm.

Kendal Black Drop

Where I come from it's only considered a pothole if you need a rope to abseil into it...

bigmat

...

pdw

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Speaking of potholes, anyone had any experience of reporting them and getting a worthwhile result?

Yes. I've reported several via fixmystreet.com. Fix times have varied between less than 24 hours, 10 days, and several months.

Apparently holes need to be 40mm deep in order for West Oxon District Council to do anything - I don't know if this a more widespread guideline.

cyclingprop

fenboy369 wrote:

I had a colege hit a pot hole two winters ago in Cambridge. He photographed it, and claimed for a new helmet and front light, the council sent him a cheque for £750 compensation. Take that photo!

How big is the colege? Was the £750 split evenly amongst the students?

nation

I've pursued claims for pothole damage before (I work for an insurance company). Not very often successfully but often enough that it's generally worth a go.

You need to ask the council to provide you with their records of any reports, their records of any monitoring of the condition of the road in question, and what their policy is with regard to pothole repair (they'll have a system of classifying damage and prioritising repairs). In order to successfully claim you need to be able to argue that they either: misclassified the damage as less severe than it was and thus neglected to repair it when their own policy says that they should have; or were aware of the damage and its severity but didn't take the appropriate action to rectify it, again according to their own policy.

The bit about using their own policy is because they have a general duty to maintain the roads, but that doesn't necessarily mean they had a specific duty to have repaired that particular pothole at that particular time. They have limited resources and can't repair everything immediately. Their policy should be based on some kind of balancing of those limits, the monitoring they can reasonably carry out, and their ability to carry out repair within a reasonable time.

Some councils will just give you the information, some will charge a fee, some will make you complete a FOIA request. Some will tell you you can't have it citing the Data Protection Act, which is utter tripe and shouldn't be accepted as an excuse.

rjsterry

Wowzers! That's some chasm there Rolf. Did well to get out of it with just a badly dented rim. Looks as though it has been there for quite a while to some degree, so that may be in your favour.