Why Potholes Are More Then Just A Nuisance

You have already started to see it on the streets of New Haven, potholes that are new and fresh from the cold winter months.  These ugly eye sores are more then just a nuisance, they can impact your vehicle and your ability to drive safely throughout the city.  New Haven auto accidents can happen due to an unseen or deeper then expected pothole and you may not even see them coming.

It will come as no surprise to you that potholes can do serious damage to your car if you hit them just the right way.  Tire blowouts become more common in the spring months as does damage that is often done to the undercarriage of a car due to these annoying holes in the middle of our roads.  It is imperative that our city takes these potholes seriously and repairs them immediately.  We want these potholes fixed, not just because we don’t like how they look, but because they are a safety hazard.

The first way a pothole can cause an accident and an injury is if you are paying attention to where you’re going.  Let’s say you’re driving down the street and you come upon an unexpected pothole.  By reflex you swerve to miss the pothole, but in doing so your car goes into the next lane over and without a split second to recover you are rear-ended by the vehicle who was driving and coming up on your left side.  This type of body damage can be serious, but it can also lead to injuries like whiplash.

In another scenario where you may not be paying quite close enough attention, hitting a pothole unexpectedly without breaking at all can damage your tires and cause them to blowout.  A tire blowout by itself may be not much more then a nuisance, but combine that with the speed of your vehicle and you can very quickly lose control of your car and cause an accident in the very crowded streets of the city.

Consider one last scenario, you come across a very large pothole and slow to either avoid it or limit the damage it can do to your car.  The driver behind you does not see the pothole and realizes you are slowing too late and rear-ends you causing a New Haven auto accident.  Again there are a whole host of injuries that are a result of being rear-ended.

We all bemoan potholes this time of year.  They are an expected result of living in a region with changing seasons.  It is important that they are repaired in a timely manner so that the city is cleaned up and our safety is not put at risk while driving on city streets.

If you or a loved one experienced an injury as a result of an accident caused by a pothole, contact our office and one of our experienced attorneys will review your case.