Pain from the potholes: Protecting your tires from serious damage
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – An annual scourge of the spring is hanging on to be a mid-summer nightmare.
Potholes!
At the moment of impact, how you handle your steering wheel can make thousands of dollars worth of difference.
There's nothing like that sinking feeling when you fall into a tire-eater.
"The wheel drops into the hole and then the damage is done when strikes the pavement coming out of the other side," said Jennifer Johnsen Nazareth of State Farm Insurance. "It can be a couple hundred to literally thousands of dollars."
Johnsen-Nazareth said potholes rank right up there with deer strikes when it comes to curses of drivers in our parts.
"In a hurry, that's when you tend to hit a pothole especially hard," she explained. "You don't see it coming – you're focused on where you're going."
So, Johnsen said to slow down and avoid tailgating because the car in front of you because it will hide the danger.
"You can often see the pothole coming and shift to avoid it," Johnsen added.
However, shift does not mean swerve.
"I would be worried about swerving – you're running off the road, or running into the other lane," explained Tim Dietz the owner of the auto shop Troubleshooters.
Dietz said if you're going to hit a pothole, hit it head-on.
"Hit it straight, you have a lot more strength, that keeps the tire and air pressure to keep from damaging the wheel," he explained. "If you hit at an angle, it'll pinch the tire. Depending on how deep and how hard – you can bend a wheel and most vehicles today have aluminum wheels. On average [it] will probably run about $450 and with your higher-line vehicles it will be between 12 and $1,400."
Depending on your insurance coverage, the repairs may or may not be covered, so make sure to double-check with your insurance agent.
Long story short, the rule is kind of like when an animal runs in front of your vehicle – don't swerve because the result could be much, much worse.