Unmarked 2-foot-deep pothole damages at least a dozen cars on metro Atlanta road

9
WSBTV.com News Staff
·2 min read

A broken storm drain on a metro Atlanta highway is a nightmare for drivers, who face thousands of dollars in repairs after their cars hit the two-foot-deep hole.

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Channel 2′s Tom Regan was on Metropolitan Parkway Tuesday morning, where a Georgia Department of Transportation road crew was beginning to make repairs.

That’s after more than a dozen cars were damaged by the giant hole.

Driver Bob Braxton said he couldn’t believe his car wasn’t damaged when it slammed into the pothole, which opened up after the storm drain collapsed.

Braxton said he saw plenty of other drivers who weren’t so lucky. He said he heard that up to 15 cars were damaged.

“There were five cars there,” Braxton said. “They had busted out tires, many busted their rims.”

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A woman who didn’t want to be identified said she plunged into the hole on Friday, popping her tire and bending her rims. She said that there were no cones to warn her about the danger.

“Hit the storm drain pretty much head-on, and it was pretty hard,” she said. “My rim, according to the dealer, is $900.”

While the storm grates have City of Atlanta written on them, Metropolitan Parkway is actually a state highway that GDOT is responsible for maintaining.

A worker told Regan that they only got word Tuesday morning of the treacherous drain collapse and came to block if off an repair the problem.

Many drivers said someone should have at least put a temporary fix in place to spare them a costly nightmare.

“If they had put on a metal plate, it would have been fixed, no problem,” Braxton said.

Drivers can file a claim for damage caused by potholes and collapsed storm drains, but you may also have to prove the state, city or county was negligent in making repairs.

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