Road debris punches a hole in the floor of my car

[Scruit]

 

[DT MI]

Bummer. I had to watch it 3 or 4 times before I could even see it. You might have hit it at just the right (wrong?) angle to get it to flip up and dig in like it did.

 

[M---]

Maybe the city/state responsible for that section of road will pay for the repairs?

Stimsonite
Snow Plowable Castings
• Hardened cast iron housings designed to withstand harsh conditions

 

[reverend]

Jeez - that's done some damage!

I had an issue two years ago where I hit a pothole and it cracked my wheel clean in two. I had pictures of it and the damage but the council just sent a letter from their lawyers to say they wouldn't accept liability. I wasn't asking for anything other than the cost of a new alloy and tyre and it would have cost more through the courts.

Hopefully you'll get somewhere with this though and have better luck than I did!

Glad you managed to pull over ok though!

 

[DT MI]

Maybe the city/state responsible for that section of road will pay for the repairs?...

Not likely. In the US most government agencies are liable only if they are 1)aware of the condition, 2) have an opportunity to rectify it and 3) fail to do so.

 

[flank]

File the paperwork for repair reimbursement with the state, include the video and photos. The worse they can do is deny the claim. I read a news advice column and a guy wrote in about damages to his car by road debris. Sometimes they will pay out.

 

[M---]

Liability can also come into play if they've had these things pull out of the road before, in which case it can be argued that they ought to continually try to clear these things up. File in small claims court (up here, they can't award "costs" in small claims). Offer to settle for the cost of the repair, or let them pay their legal team to build a case to defend themselves, and let them pay their lawyers to show up in court to defend themselves.

I work for a public agency, and when threatened with a lawsuit, every time there's a decision of whether to simply reimburse or to let it go to court. Most often, we reimburse-- but usually only when we expect the other party will take it to court.

You can be held liable for damage, even if you didn't know anything was wrong-- if I build a building, and after 15 years with no prior warning, a window on the top floor blows out in a windstorm and hits somebody below, I do have liability for the damages that person suffers, whether I'm a private individual or the government. If I was aware that something had been going wrong, and I did nothing about it, then I could face criminal charges.

That said, there is a "reasonable expectation" issue-- we don't expect roads to be completely clear. But who's really expecting big chunks of . If you're walking in a grocery store, and you slip and fall on a tomato that somebody dropped on the floor, is the grocery store at fault? Maybe, maybe not-- as long as they do periodic clean-ups, they won't be at fault, because it's a normal expectation that fruits will occasionally be dropped on the ground.

On a road, who really expects a big cast iron road marker to come out of the road and blow through the bottom of their car? File the paperwork, as Flank says, and see where it goes.

 

[flank]

http://www.dot.state.oh.us/damagereport/Pages/default.aspx