How Potholes Can Damage Your Car And How To Avoid Them

Most of us have been travelling on the daily. Love it or hate it, road travel is an inherent part of the city life, be it in a car, bike, bus, or on foot. In any case, the biggest hindrance we find daily are those up-to-no-good potholes. Every time you step out, there is a chance that you may encounter potholes. While the temporary solution is to change routes, but with an ever-increasing state of the potholes, that doesn’t really help anymore. Some may change their routes because of them, some might find huge roadblocks just to get through the traffic jam caused by the broken roads. There are ‘n’ number of risks involved when we speak of the menace that the potholes are, some are too big, and some are small, but all are dangerous for you and your vehicles, especially during the rainy season. Speaking of the potholes being hazardous for your vehicle, we enlisted the damage that can be caused by them to your vehicles and to what extent as well. It is very hard for one to avoid all the roads with potholes; therefore, one should be cautious in tackling them.

The most common damage one can think of when speaking of potholes is the damage to the tyres. The tyres are the ones that get the initial impact when hitting a pothole, so there are high chances of them getting damaged or getting a flat-tyre on the spot. With every impact over a pothole, the tyre gets more and more stretched, and the belts and cords inside the tyre as well are stretched on every impact. The health of the tyre deteriorates, and while it may not blow out suddenly after, it will go down the road. One should check their tyres if they are stiff and aren’t soft after a pothole impact. They should take action immediately and either replace it with a spare or fill the one with air to make it stiff again.

The other serious damage that can happen to a car is on the wheels. The wheels will be the ones to sustain the impact of the pothole bump, which sometimes leads to a bent rim. The new alloys that are available in the market, like the aluminum alloys, are capable of taking a hit from the potholes. If a car goes over a pothole at a very high speed, it leads to very noticeable damage to the wheel, which can be spotted by doing a visual inspection. Other times one can find a change in the driving feel, vibrations in the steering wheel, a different car handling altogether. All these are the signs of a car wheel being damaged. One should go for an alignment check or wheel balancing in order to find and rectify the issue. If the damage to the wheel is big, then replacing or repairing it is the only option left.  

The smooth-riding feeling that we get in a new car is due to the soft and fresh suspension of the car. Over the period of time due to incessant damage over the years, due to potholes and unrepaired roads and usually, the speed at which we cross over the pothole in totality is very harmful to our suspension of the car. The impact can be in the form of shocks or big jerks and bumps, which leads to wear and tear of the suspension in our car. One may notice the car reacting very differently over road imperfections after this wear and tear in the suspensions. In order to prevent further damage to the car, one should directly take the car to the mechanic.

The sudden jerks from the potholes can cause a great deal of change in the Wheel alignment of the car. The way to notice whether the wheel alignment is hampered or not is to check and observe if the car is pulling in one direction when driving straight in line.

This can affect a great deal on the way of handling a car.

This type of damage is majorly observed in the low floor cars, that is, the damage in the bumpers. The bumpers of cars having a low floor over a pothole can be damaged due to a sudden fast dip leading to a direct impact on the bumper. The bumper might get cracked and scratched due to the impact of the car hitting the edges of the potholes. The only option is to get the bumper fixed or replaced.