How to get paid for potholes that damage cars

There are over 7,500 miles of streets in the city of Los Angeles.

Imagine how potholed they will be after a few more days of heavy rain.

Driving through a pothole can damage a tire, rim or axle; if the impact is severe enough, it can affect the suspension, undercarriage, body, or even its frame. According to a new survey by the American Automobile Assn., an estimated 44 million American drivers suffered pothole damage last year, with an average of $406 spent on repairs. Tires were the most common victims, followed by vehicle alignment and wheels, AAA found.

If your trip has been sabotaged by a pothole hidden under a pool of water or rendered invisible by an unlit street, you have ways to seek reimbursement for damages.

Here are the steps you can take.

Take the threat of the hole seriously

We all loved splashing in puddles as kids, but our cars don’t have flexible joints. Plowing through a hole can be very bad for your vehicle. So the first line of defense is to not hit one. This means staying well behind the car in front of you, so you can see the road surface ahead and react in time to avoid potholes.

It also means keeping your tires properly inflated. Underinflated tires don’t have as much air to absorb bumps, so more of the damaging impact is transmitted to your suspension. Meanwhile, overinflated tires offer too little cushioning.

You might think you know the location of all the potholes on the roads you drive frequently, but rain has a way of creating new ones. Water seeps into cracks in the pavement, weakening the layers below the surface. As vehicles hit these spots again and again (rain tends to get more cars out, not less), the weakened areas turn into bigger and bigger holes.

That’s why it’s hard to avoid hitting potholes, even on routes you know well. When you’re about to hit one, take your foot off the gas and don’t brake, experts advise. That’s because slamming on the brakes tends to compress the suspension and lower the vehicle’s nose, giving it less room to absorb the impact.

Don’t deviate either, advises the auto parts chain TiresPlus.

“Swerving into the pothole at an angle can cause the front tire to hit the rim sharply. This can cause more damage than driving straight over the pothole,” TiresPlus says on its website. “Even more importantly, swerving violently can mean leaving the traffic lane or leaving the roadway, both scenarios that can have much worse outcomes than simply hitting a pothole.”

Make sure to fix the small issues related to the holes right away.

“Look for changes in vehicle handling, excessive vibration or uneven tire wear, all signs of a problem with the suspension such as alignment or shocks,” AAA advises. “If your vehicle pulls to the left or right, have the wheel alignment checked by a trusted mechanic.”

And if you see a pothole, report it. The Times’s Shape Your LA app can show you how to report a pothole in need of repair (or any number of other everyday problems) to your city government, so you and everyone else can drive with a little less anxiety.

File an auto insurance claim

This option is only available if you pay for collision coverage, which is optional. According to the Insurance Information Institute, this covers “damage to a car resulting from a collision with an object (such as a pothole, lamppost, or guardrail), another car, or as as a result of a rollover. However, it does not cover wear and tear on a car or its tires due to poor road conditions.”

However, there are at least two reasons not to file a claim. First, you may have set your deductible at a relatively high level, such as $500 or $1,000, to keep your premiums low. If the cost of your repairs is less than or equal to your deductible, your insurance will pay nothing.

Second, if your claim is large enough to generate a payout, your insurer will likely try to recoup its cost over time through higher premiums.

“Since hitting a pothole is considered a single-vehicle accident, your insurer will usually hold you at fault for the incident unless there is evidence that another vehicle caused you to hit the pothole,” Progressive Insurance says on its site web. “Although your insurance provider will cover the damage if you have collision coverage, you may see an increase in your insurance rates at the time of renewal.”

File a claim against the government

State law makes the government liable for dangerous conditions on public property, but only if the government knew or should have known about them. So if you file a claim against a city, county, or state, you’ll need to be prepared for a fight to get reimbursed.

Any claim must be submitted within six months of the occurrence of the damage.

Attorney Allen Patatanyan, managing partner of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said you’ll need to prove a few things to establish government liability. But proving the government was or should have been told about the pothole before your accident “is a big deal,” he said.

The law provides for two ways to do this. One is to show that the government had been told about the pothole or detected it during an inspection, Patatanyan said. The other tactic, called “constructive notice,” is to establish that the government would have learned about the pothole if it had a reasonable inspection routine.

Finding out if the government knew about a pothole usually requires a public records request to pull down all complaints received about that particular road, along with accident reports and inspection records. Los Angeles gets a lot of complaints: The Department of Public Works said it received 5,869 pothole repair requests in the first three weeks of March alone. The department said its crews had fixed nearly 4,000, leaving about 30 percent unfilled at the time. And that’s just for the last few complaints.

Unless you can point to complaints, accidents, or inspection records that alerted the government to a pothole, you must show that the government should have known about it. This is the kind of thing you would use an expert witness to argue in court, Patatanyan said.

Circumstances also matter. For example, you could argue that after heavy rains, the government should have stepped up inspections of roads with aging pavement.

In any case, the first step in filing a claim is to find out which government entity is responsible for maintaining the road you were on when you hit that pothole.

• Los Angeles and other large cities are responsible for potholes on streets (but not freeways) within their boundaries. Here is a link to the LA claim form.
• Counties are responsible for streets in unincorporated areas and smaller towns that pay the county to maintain them. Here is a link to the LA County Claim Form.
• Caltrans, the state’s transportation department, is on the lookout for potholes on federal and state highways.

For Caltrans claims of $10,000 or less, download a form, then submit the completed version to the Caltrans District Claims Office serving the county where the pothole is located. For Los Angeles and Ventura counties, this office is located on the 13th floor at 100 South Main St. in LA For claims over $10,000, Caltrans directs you to request a form by writing to: Government Claims Program, Office of Risk and Insurance Management, Department of General Services, PO Box 989052, MS 414, West Sacramento, CA 95798-9052.

The forms ask for the names of witnesses and invite you to submit evidence to support your claim, such as repair bills. Although they don’t specifically ask you to prove that the government knew or should have known about the pothole, each form has a section asking you to explain why you think the government is responsible.

For example, the City of Los Angeles form asks, “What particular ACT or OMISSION do you say caused the injury or damage?” The state’s form asks, “What do you say Caltrans or its contractor did to cause your injury or damage?”

Progressive Insurance warns that it can take a long time to prevail in a claim against the government, “so if your vehicle is undriveable, it may make more sense to file an insurance claim for the pothole damage or pay for the repairs pocket and then apply for reimbursement from the City Council later.” Please note, however, that any claim must be made within six months of the pothole strike.

The larger your claim, the more likely the government will deny it, at which point you’ll need to apply for reimbursement in court. In particular, Patatanyan said, if you make a claim where there are injuries, “that’s when the fight starts.”