[ba] road repair trench = tire damage

[Ti Kan]

Thanks Steve,  I'll try your suggestions.

-Ti

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 11:03:31PM -0700, k1drbar wrote:
> 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