Calgary driver stuck with over $1,500 bill after hitting pothole

It’s that dreaded time of year for Calgary drivers — pothole season.

One driver recently hit a costly pothole on Glenmore Trail that lead to an pricey repair job.

Gavin Graham tells CityNews he hit the deep pothole on Glenmore near the Crowchild Trail off-ramp. He’s now paid more than $1,000 to fix hs vehicle.

“It pretty much destroyed my tire, destroyed my rim and destroyed my alignment,” he says. “It costed upwards of $1,500 so far, and even now I’m still paying the price for it.”

Graham says he’s still paying off the repairs and hasn’t even got to the rim yet, which will cost at least another $300. He says he tried to get compensation from the City of Calgary, but was told they don’t cover claims of this nature.

“My response from the city was that potholes are weather-related incidents and they are not responsible for it,” he says. “And they wouldn’t cover anything, even though I had proven to them and given them a bunch of information on the actual pothole I hit.”

CityNews has reached out to the city for comment.

A manager at a local tire shop says the extent of pothole damage that they’ve seen can vary, warning that drivers should be careful when navigating potholes.

“Some of the more minor things we see are damage to the tire, bent rims, and some of the more severe cases are completely separated components, and vehicles even written off from bad enough ones,” says Brent Morley, Kal Tire manager.

Although the city has since filled the pothole, Graham says they remain an ongoing issue for him.

“I’m constantly swerving,” he says. “I feel like I’m going to get pulled over for looking like I’m drunk, when in reality I’m just swerving all the massive potholes on the road.”