Tiger Tales 10: Gravel and Potholes – Who’s Liable?

By the Law Tigers
America’s Injury Lawyers Who Ride

Gravel and Potholes-If it causes a Motorcycle Accident, Who is Liable?

We want to address an issue that generates numerous questions among riders. In particular, to what degree is a city, county or state liable when a road hazard is to blame for a motorcycle accident?

If you’ve ridden your motorcycle long enough, you’ve experienced the “out of control sensation” and potential road hazard created by a gaping pothole or loose gravel. If you are unfortunate enough “to go down”, do you have a legal claim against the agency responsible for the repair and/or maintenance of that road? As you might have assumed, there is neither a quick nor definitive answer. So if you are a cautious rider and your accident was not the result of your riding ability, who’s to blame?

First, a distinction must be made as to the cause of the particular hazard in question. For example, let’s take loose gravel on the road. If the gravel is the result of new construction in the area, or a gravel truck made a turn at that location, prematurely dumping a portion of its load onto the road, then you may have a claim against the trucking or construction company responsible for the hazard they created. Clearly, they have an obligation to warn you of a potential impending hazard. That’s one of the reasons that construction areas are usually so clearly marked with cautionary signs.

On the other hand, if the road gravel buildup is caused by normal traffic use and/or natural causes (wind and erosion), then it becomes a more complex set of issues. There will always be some road debris that evades cleaning crews. How much road-covered gravel must be present to constitute a hazard? Did the entity responsible for maintaining the road know, or should they have known that the hazard existed? That is to say, at the time, did the entity have proper notice of the hazard and fail to act upon it? Were they given a reasonable amount of time to reduce or eliminate the hazard? And under these particular circumstances (at the time of the accident), what would be considered a reasonable amount of time?

What if there’s a gaping pothole in the road? Clearly the responsible entity must know about it before they would be able to fix it. To what degree are they responsible for the continuous monitoring of the road? Once they are made aware of the pothole, what is considered a reasonable amount of time to fix it? Or perhaps they knew the pothole was there, but did not know that it presented any real hazard to you. Is it reasonable to expect that with all of the logistical and financial constraints placed on the agency, every road can be perfectly maintained all of the time?

When seeking compensatory damages from a public entity, these are the issues that you can likely expect their attorney to raise. These types of incidents have to be viewed on a case-by-case basis-There is no “one-size fits all” approach that can be applied. I believe it is fair to say that at best, these cases are normally aggressively defended by the maintaining entity, be it city, county or state. If there is even the slightest doubt as to their liability, and as you can probably assume from the above, there is almost always some question of liability, then the responsible entity will likely litigate the matter.