[ba] road repair trench = tire damage

[k1drbar]

Grrrr ... I feel your pain Ti!  I had a similar issue with a rear wheel on
my motorcycle, except that one bent the wheel badly enough that the tire
wouldn't hold air.  In my case it was the city of San Jose ... and the
windmills seemed large enough that I didn't battle them, but I did learn
that they had insurance for this.  

I found a contact link for the county:

    http://www.sccgov.org/rda/attachments/master_contacts_list.pdf

You might want to ask the "roads at countyroads.org" folks to see what they
would recommend.  One of the supervisors is a neighbor with whom I'm pretty
familiar, if you don't get any response I can contact him.  

I've also had pretty good luck with the Roadshow guy at the Mercury News ...
even if he doesn't print your letter in the paper he may provide some useful
info.  

You may want to contact your insurance company too ... I don't know if this
comes under any sort of reduced deductible due to it being a road hazard,
but even if it is not something that they would cover they may have some
suggestions for you ... 

Good luck!
Steve Buchholz

-----Original Message-----
From: ba-group-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:ba-group-bounces at audifans.com]
On Behalf Of Ti Kan
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 10:20 PM
To: ba-group at audifans.com
Subject: [ba] road repair trench = tire damage

Hi all,

Last Tuesday night I was driving in my S4, westbound on Central
Expressway in Sunnyvale where there is some road work between Fair Oaks
and Mathilda Aves., they had dug a series of open trenches across the
whole width of the road.  I wasn't aware of them until I came upon
the first (and worst) one which caused a violent tire crash.
Other than reduced speed signs (normal 50mph, now 40mph), the
lanes were open to traffic and the trenches did not have any covering.

The car seemed to drive fine afterwards so I didn't pay too much
attention until a couple days later, I discovered a pronounced
bulge on the sidewall of my left front tire.  I can't see any
obvious signs of damage on the other tires.  I'm surprised that
my Avus wheels took that without bending.

I went back to the location yesterday and found that they had paved
over the trenches.  I was going to take some photos but not sure
if it's going to be any help now.

These are Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 235/40R18 Y tires which are around
$250 each (Tire Rack price) after shipping/mounting/balancing, and
I am probably looking at replacing the front pair at minimum, so it's
not exactly pocket change.  I don't have road hazard warranty on
the tires, so I am looking at possible options.

So, does anyone have any experience or knowledge about whether I could
file a claim on the government?  Central Expressway is a Santa Clara
County highway, but I didn't find anything relevant on their website.
Googling didn't yield anything specific to Santa Clara either.

Any ideas are welcome.

-Ti

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