£2.85m insurance bill for pothole-damaged cars

226PM GMT 09 March 2010

AA Insurance pronounced around 1,900 pothole claims were done by motorists during Feb after roads were shop-worn by one of the majority critical winters on record. The organisation pronounced pothole claims had soared by around 600 per cent during the past 3 years, as councils onslaught to say the main road network.

Simon Douglas, executive of AA Insurance, pronounced "Nationally, the repairs to cars caused by potholes in Feb alone cost insurers around �2.85m the homogeneous of about 1,900 claims. But that"s usually the tip of the iceberg, since it takes critical repairs to have it value an word claim.

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"Garages and tyre centres are traffic with large thousands of punctured tyres, shop-worn tracking or damaged springs that don"t clear creation a claim."

The AA is job on the Government to make use of the additional income lifted from the enlarge in fuel avocation on Apr 1 to correct the country"s potholes, to forestall councils being forced to lift legislature taxation to cover the cost of maintenance.

Edmund King, the AA"s president, pronounced "Local roads are in a dreadful, dangerous state and puncture appropriation is desperately indispensable to stop the disease of potholes.

"However, with the engineer already profitable �46 billion per year in assorted motoring taxes and usually a small suit outlayed on the roads, it would be main road spoliation to direct some-more income from internal people."