The vast majority of compensation claims for hazards on Victorian roads are being rejected, new data shows. In 2023 and 2024, 1709 notices were lodged but only 23 resulted in a settlement offer and more than two thirds of hazards were described as pavement or surface defects.
00:00A smooth commute can set you up for a great day.
00:09A bumpy one, not so much.
00:14In the west, in the north and in the east, roads are infuriating drivers.
00:20I have a car that they've already said the wheel things are damaged
00:24because I've gone over a pothole.
00:26And to fix it, it's thousands of dollars.
00:29Unfortunately, most of the really big ones have a green, lime green circle around it, so you see it.
00:35Tar shops are probably the only ones benefiting from dodgy roads.
00:40Every second wheel that's coming in through the door, even if it's getting cosmetic repaired,
00:44needs to be re-rolled because the wheel's buckled from driving through a pothole.
00:52It's shops like these that are on the front lines witnessing the brunt of driver frustration.
00:57It's obviously at a time when they're travelling home or it might be at night because the visibility is low.
01:02And yeah, they're generally quite upset, especially if they have to get on a tow truck and they're stranded.
01:06Lisa Dawson loves being out on the road.
01:11It's the best feeling, especially since we were in lockdown.
01:15Getting back out on the bike especially, it's just a really good feeling of freedom.
01:19But she's lucky she wasn't on her bike when she hit this pothole on a council road driving near her home back in 2022.
01:29It was at night time, so I actually hit something and I actually felt like it was a wombat.
01:34That's how bad it was.
01:36And I'm like, oh wow, what was that?
01:39But if I was on the bike, I might have been killed.
01:43Yeah, yeah.
01:44She was quoted over $2,500 to fix damage to the tyres and rims.
01:50Despite piles of documentation and photos, she says she hasn't seen a cent of compensation with the council denying liability.
01:59My bike, my car is registered. I always maintain my car's maintenance. Also, I'm a rate payer. You know, I spend a lot of money, so I just don't think it's fair.
02:13Responsibility for our roads is mostly shared between the state and local councils.
02:19If you manage to hit a hazard on a state road and you want compensation, you can lodge a notice of incident and claim.
02:26But there is a threshold. You have to foot the first $1,680 worth of damage. And it turns out payouts are rare.
02:351,709 notices were lodged over a two year period between the start of 2023 and the end of 2024.
02:44According to data we've obtained under freedom of information laws, in the end only 23 of those have resulted in a settlement offer.
02:52That's around 1%. More than two thirds of hazards were described as pavement or surface defects.
02:59But others included obstructions and substances in the traffic lane and pavement markings.
03:05The most mentioned suburb was Pakenham and the most mentioned road, the Princess Freeway.
03:12The Nationals leader has spent much of his public life advocating for better roads.
03:17He says it's no longer just a regional issue.
03:20One of the things that I think we start to notice after a while is that just patch on patch on patch.
03:24So the road surface is terrible even when it's been fixed up notionally.
03:28Compensation claims are being knocked back for a few different reasons.
03:32For example, for 69% of claims VicRoads said it wasn't liable.
03:38Of those, nearly half didn't meet the threshold with claims of this type worth more than $250,000.
03:45They might do a tyre and it might be $400 or $500 and it's a big impact on people at a cost of living crisis.
03:51But the threshold is in the $1,600 mark and that makes it harder.
03:55We think though that the government should be fixing the roads so that people aren't facing that upfront cost in the first place.
04:00Pothole reports for the year to July rose by almost 9% in Victoria when compared to the year prior, according to SnapSend Solve.
04:11It's an app that allows community members to report local issues by taking a photo and uploading it, alerting the right authority or the solver.
04:20For example, offensive graffiti can get fixed within, you know, 12 hours.
04:25A damaged Telstra pit can be fixed even faster than that.
04:28But things like potholes sometimes goes in the scheduled maintenance bucket so it takes a little bit longer.
04:33Danny says about 8 out of 10 potholes reported on the app are solved.
04:38A little bit of a sense of accountability.
04:40So if you send a report directly to the solver, it can sometimes go into a black hole.
04:45The Victorian government is spending $976 million on its 2025-26 road maintenance blitz,
04:53which it says is the biggest single year investment in road maintenance in the state's history.
Be the first to comment