Nasty Road Divots

Went down a nice road with some nice bends and technical aspect to it all...

Now on a few of the bends there are some quite considerably large divots/chunks of road missing on the bends, not in nice places either, like right on riding line(my riding line(i say mine because others are different)).

Can anything be done of these?

If you come off due to one, can you claim against council?

Originally Posted by plowsie

If you come off due to one, can you claim against council?

Good point, Plowsie. If you trip on a pavement due to council neglect, you can. Is it the same with roads?

[dizzyblonde]

come ride up here plowsie, you'd soon get used to it. Nasty roads get your bum end twitching all over the place( both thr bike and you) lol I ring my local council all the time for potholes. and funnily enough they come and fill em up, cheaper than a claim against em

[timwilky]

I think you need to prove

1) they knew of the defect in the road
2) They had had enough time to repair said defect
3) that said defect was the cause of the damages you sustain.

Just because there is a defect in the road, you cannot expect it to be repaired 10 minutes after it occurred. Therefore, if you see a problem, report it. But don't then claim a week afterwards it caused your off. Maybe a month would be reasonable to repair the problem.

[dizzyblonde]

Sometimes the only way to get rid of bad roads is to complain. Like i said I have done it, in fact I was quite impressed at our council for repairing a giant pothole in my line of riding, on my street.....the day after I called them
And when someone left loads of lumpy tarmac on the blind bend of my street, to avoid it you had to ride on the opposite side and get crunched by on coming car...the council sent soemone to remove it the day after I called them
They obviously provide such quick response to avoid claims

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by plowsie

mine because others are different)).

Yeah ride around them

I think like Tim says you'd have to report it and then give the council time to repair it before taking further action.

Bet your bottom dollar if somebody did fall off after going over one, the council would soon repair it. IIRC MCN did a feature on reporting bad roads a while ago and got the councils to fix them. Take some pictures with a ruler in the pothole ( if possible / safe to do so ) and send them in and see what they do.

said in mcn last week the pot hole situation is going to get worse.

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

you'd have to report it and then give the council time to repair it before taking further action.

Correct. The defect has to be made aware to the council before any claim can be made. If you were to come off your bike and the council were unaware of this defect you would not be able to claim. Stupid really as how would you know if it has been reported unless you were the one who reported it, other than paying a solicitor to go through the records to find the answer!

[yorkie_chris]

And if you reported it, then you really should have avoided it lol

[Spiderman]

The BMF website ran a campain last year or maybe 2006 now called "Report a Road" and you could go thru their website and find links to who to "advise" about the road in particular...and once reported and they are aware of it then they do indeed become responsible should you injure yourself because of it.

But the link i used to have for it is dead now so its probably worth trying your local councils site and seein if there is anything there of use to you.
but definatel worth reporting cos if they dont know about it they wont fix it...and if they do know about it but think the public aint bothered it wont be high priority. But if they get a complaint about it then it puts a fire under their backsides to get out n get it fixed.