Apologies all, was trying to copy and paste, finally got black text on white background. Thankyou for your patience !!

I was recently driving along a road in my town, at night, in the rain. I was approaching a point where a Mercedes type van was parked on the opposite side of the road. Generally along this stretch of road, a vehicle coming the other way will give way at parked vehicles but, on this occasion, the car coming towards me decided there was room for both of us at the same time next to the aforementioned parked white van.

I moved in close to the kerb to carry on my way when there was a big bang that made me jump. I stopped, checked the car, and saw that a portion of kerbstone, approx 4' long, had been disturbed by tree roots and pushed approx 4 inches in to the road. This was what I clipped with my front nearside wheel making a bit of a mess of it.

I completed a claim form and then received a letter saying the matter had been passed to the Highways solicitor.

Surprise, surprise, they say the Highways had only recently (sept 2015) carried out their lawfully required inspection of that area, and an inspector had been to the location of my incident (i supplied the exact location via the house number behind the kerb in question) and could NOT see anything wrong !!

I have been along this road and found there are currently 21 instances of kerbs broken/cracked/pushed into the road by tree roots. A friend living on this road has heard a number of incidents where vehicles have hit these protruding kerbs. Of the 21 broken kerbs, 14 have clear signs of scrapes from vehicle wheels but the Highways/solicitor say there have been NO reported incidents/complaints from joe public.

I have told them I cannot seek legal advice (which they know) but have threatened local press/media exposure for what it is worth.

The Highways dept. do have a reputation locally for using many varied excuses for getting away with paying for vehicle damage.

I consider myself a reasonable driver and, prior to meeting the damaged kerb, was driving closely but safely to the kerb to facilitate passing the oncoming car. I would not have sustained any damage if the kerb was not sticking out into the road so feel the Highways dept should be responsible for repairing my wheel. I would seriously consider saying they are lying about inspecting this stretch of road in Sept as the colour and condition of the kerbing in this area would indicate this has been happening gradually over a period of time.

Any advice/experience of what I do next would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance, Paul

Edited by Avant on 31/12/2015 at 22:50