Safe Speed Forums

But they're still liable...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

It depends...

At a slow speed you will obviously drop fully into the hole, and get the full effect. At a very high speed the wheel will not have had time to drop into the hole and you will not notice it, but for a period of time the affected wheels will have been airborne. This has little impact on the wear of the parts involved, but can be trouble if the pothole is wider and deeper than expected, and the wheel makes it to the bottom in time to hit the steep opposite side - the solution is to obviously go even faster, but some "potholes" such as on the Trans-Africa highway (Kenya) shouldn't be attempted like this as a 10' wide and 8" deep pothole will break the axle. In fact when I drove it the comfortable place to drive was in the mud on either side as the surface was so broken up in places it was impossible.

The effect with speed bumps is actually the opposite - at high speed the suspension is forced to compress as the inertia of the body of the car doesn't want to move up, while at lower speed it has time to do so, which is why for maximum comfort speed bumps should be taken in excess to 50 mph. However the shocks and other suspension components will have a dramatically shortened lifetime as they are being overworked.

Of course, you could just drive around the pothole in the first place - unlike speed bumps, in the UK at least, they tend not to be that wide.

Just be a little wary of ones in the Black Country, as it has been known for some forgotten mine shaft to open up under the road....

Perhaps - we cannot establish liability on what we read on a web site. Courts and
judges and things like that do the job. AFAIK potholes do not automatically make a public
bodies liable - if it did, the country would go bankrupt paying huge gangs of pothole fillers
from taxpayers funds!

I'd expect you need to show that they were negligent (i.e. thier maintenance program is
defective in general (isolated failure doesn't count for much)), and even then, you need to
show that you are blameless (not speeding?) and that the costs are fair. It's not always so
easy. I'd guess your chances (at best) are 1 in 5. Does that sound right?

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I stole this .sig

No, not right at all. In the civil court liability would be determined 'on a balance of probabilities'. And the balance here is very heavily weighed against the highways authority. I'd rate the chance of full recovery in excess of 90%.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Couple of things, IIRC, so long as a LA has been notified of a pothole (or similar) and they have had a reasonable amount of time to fix it, yet haven't, then they are liable. And secondly, travelling quicker over potholes does less damage to your car. So what do we do now? You say that drivers should not expect road surfaces to be pothole-free, so is it acceptable that drivers travel a bit quicker, just in case?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

That could be false. Exceptions could exist if the pothole is on an infrequently used track,
or if it is a heavily potholed lane, or if the pothole is small, or obviously visible, or cannot
be fixed for technical reasons, or if the road is not adopted, etc. Furthermore,
'reasonable time' is highly contentious. What if you were driving in an unreasonable
manner, or if your car was already defective? The list goes on.



Lum has shown that we can't expect road surfaces to be pothole-free. We know they
are not. I wouldn't speed over potholes myself, unless it's safe and legal. Make your own
choice, but also consider the risk to other road users.

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I stole this .sig

Then we'll wait for Lum to declare that he has his money. Good luck, Lum, keep us in the loop.

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I stole this .sig

So you think that there are times when it is safe and acceptable to exceed the posted speed limit?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Driving is not safe in absolute terms, but if a law is broken, it has to be "accepted" (although it could be punished as well).

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I stole this .sig

Given that she was leaving a major datacentre in central London and heading for the M1, I doubt it would have been some unused little backwater. I'm fairly sure it was an A class road, but what passes for an A road in london regularly scares the crap out of me as an ex-northerner.

Small update.

Thames Water have admitted responsibility, and have asked for 3 quotes to replace the wheels, we're having problems here.

The wheels she has are no-longer made, the closest match that she actually likes costs around 400 quid and is a different size (she currently has 16s, these are 17s, she is happy to go to 17s)

So, we need 4 wheels which isn't a problem, we need 3 quotes which is a problem as we've only found two companies that sell them. Will a quote from an American supplier (including extortionate shipping charges) suffice?

We then need to get 3 quotes for painting them black, which may also prove a problem as we don't have the wheels to show to the painters.

The other major problem, and I personally don't think she is going to be able to claim this one, is that 5 new tyres and a steel spare wheel of the new size need to be procured. No tyre places will give written quotes, the closest I've had is one wrote the quote in pen on the back of a business card, but it turned out to be a business card for an auto electrical shop!

Any suggestions for where to go from here? Personally I think she should throw in some additional money and do a 5-stud conversion which will mean she doesn't have to get additional holes drilled in her brake discs (she is running on 300ZX brakes) in order to make them fit.