Where I live there are speedbumps to get out of my road no matter which way I go, and I go in and out quite a lot. And the main road that leads onto mine was in a poor state.
Around 17months ago now, some rather pricey suspension on my bmw, by that I mean the rear spring snapped in half and the front strut 'shat' itself.

At the time the suspension, KW coilovers, were around 14months old, therefore out of warrenty and still pretty new. Certainly too new to be damaged as they were!

I contacted the council with regards to this and had an email back from a person in the engineering department. Here is the email

hi mr *********
I have looked at the defects in guisborough which you have commented on , and agree that the roads are in poor condition , my job as highways inspector for guisborough is to inspect each road twice a year and repair the safety defects , potholes , loose paving , etc , and I pass on the worst roads eg ledbury way to the engineers to assess as regards a permanent solution , to discuss in detail my phone number is *********** .
thanks steve

After a bit further discussion I also got this email from the same person

hi
I agree with you the speed bumps were put in because of a residents pertition and have caused problems to cars mine included but im not in a position to get them removed, will talk to you when you get back.
thanks steve

From these two emails, to me its pretty clear he has admitted the speedbumps DO damage vehicles and also that the road I mentioned were in a poor condition and not maintained to standard.

After being ignored by the council for months I finally got a reply back saying it was going to be handed over the their insurers.

Eventually they got in touch with me and said that it wasn't the councils fault.

I then forwarded the above emails to then and got a reply back which said something along the lines of;

unless you can prove that the council have to pay for the damage, then we do not accept liability.


Now obviously, this isn't a good enough reply for my liking.
Surely if their speedbumps and roads have caused damage to my car and they have admitted they know this is the case, surely they should be paying for it?

Can anyone help out with how I procedd with this situation as the insurers are just point blank refusing to give me the answer I want to hear.

Thanks

How did the speedbumps damage your suspension? Much as I dislike speedbumps, unless they failed to paint them or mark them and you didn't see it then you have to decide for yourself how slowly to cross them to prevent damage (thats kind of the point of them). If you had smashed your sump or bent your propshaft because of them that could be different because it might happen no matter how slowly you took it.

[Edited on 4/4/15 by luke2152]

I literally crawsl over them, so slow I quite often have other cars overtaking my over them!

I say they broke them do to excessive wear. Coilovers from KW should last a lot longer than these did.

And it wasn't just the speedbumps, the road in and out of mine is horrendous, they say they inspect them every 6months and carry out repairs when required, that road still hasn't been repaired and it was well over a year ago when the engineer said that he saw how bad the road was.

Before the suspension I had suffered other damage but just turned a blind eye too it, the suspension was the final straw.

other damage included a completely seized engine in my MK due to knocking the sump plug out on one of the bumps, scratched paint on my bmw bumper (which it was by no means 'slammed', a hole worn in the exhaust from scraping on them, 2 snapped suspension springs on a terrano 4x4 (both of which were around 18months old).

I now have worn out bushes on the rear of the bmw to add to the list, these again are around 18months old and were genuine bmw parts.

Perhaps you should be chasing the manufacturer then. I can't imagine crawling over a speed bump putting half the stress as hard cornering on your springs and bushes.
The other stuff you might have a leg to stand on especially losing your sump plug from the mk.

I am *surrounded* by speed humps, massive ones. The car (R1oT) will not pass.

The only way to get the car out of the house and beyond the reach of the tables is to put the car into a trailer, take that to the car park at work and offload the vehicle.

This is how silly it has all become.

I hate to say it, but the only way around this is to take pictures of the road, measure any potholes (length, width and most importantly depth) and compare to the Councils "acceptable standards". If it is outside their tolerances, then you should have a case. As for the speed bumps approach, I think you're onto a loser on that one unfortunately.

I went through the same pothole every day for almost 6 months, and then one day it caught the sidewall of two of my tyres and punctured them both. I took pics and measurements and wrote to the Council saying it was outside of their guidelines, only to receive a response of "The Highways Department was in your area last week and inspected the road in question, and found no defects." When I told them I had evidence to backup my case that the poor state of the road had caused the damage to my vehicle (and that I would be handing this to the small claims court if they didn't settle), they quickly sent me a cheque for £180 to cover the cost of 2 new tyres saying that cashing of the cheque would deemed to be the end of the matter.

Sometimes you have to push for things, but you have to be very clear about how to claim and have just cause and evidence to support.

Round here they tend to use the type that don't go the full width of the road so you can go over them with one wheel, with the other wheel on level ground. The Mk can go over fine on that basis.

Might be worth suggesting to the highways department where you live.

As others have said I think you'll struggle to get anything in this case, though I do sympathise with you as my Filton Address has the same problem with a mixture of types of speed bump in every direction (The worst for my car being the huge speed table/Crossing ones that are curb height and about 3 metres wide).

If the speed bumps are properly marked and built to the correct standards (Which they almost certainly will be, though there is a chance they're not) they won't be liable. My dad had a similar issue about 10 years ago when his exhaust grounded on a speed bump and they pretty much said the bump meets the regulations, therefore its your cars fault.

I would also agree that it seems more like a manufacturing fault with your components as even really cheap nasty suspension should survive going over speed bumps at low speeds.

It might be a stupid question but you're not braking close to (Or over) the speed bump? a lot of people make this mistake which lowers the front end and compresses the suspension so you have no travel to use over the bump. In my MX5 I had to be accelerating to go over some of the ones round here.

Most local authorities will reply in exactly the same way - the road was fine last time we did our routine check. That cuts out a lot of claims straight away. You need to persevere on that. I don't think you'll get anywhere with the speed bumps complaint though. Sorry.

quote:

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Originally posted by luke2152
Perhaps you should be chasing the manufacturer then. I can't imagine crawling over a speed bump putting half the stress as hard cornering on your springs and bushes.
The other stuff you might have a leg to stand on especially losing your sump plug from the mk.

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