139 Lexington County drivers asked state officials to pay for vehicle damage from potholes.

None collected a dime.

Since you started paying higher gas taxes for road repairs 3 years ago, DOT has denied almost 2,300 pothole-damage claims.

That’s more than half of all such requests.

Lexington was not the only county with lots of claims – and vehicle damage.

Richland (Columbia) had 553 claims, Spartanburg 176, York 173, Greenville 160 and Charleston 152.

Motorists collectively sought more than $4.8 million in 4,325 pothole-damage claims received by DOT from 2018 through 2020.

Settlements totaled $802,609, or 16.5% of the overall requests, according to the records obtained under the SC Freedom of Information Act.

Records show there were 20 separate claims seeking at least $10,000 in damages, including 5 individual claims of $300,000 or more. All but 3 of the 20 requests were denied.

The average requested claim was $1,118.

The average approved settlement was $396.

2,292 claims were denied

2,022 were approved. The rest are pending or appealed.

If you want to file a pothole damage claim, you must submit a notarized damage claim form plus 2 repair estimates or a paid invoice to the DOT maintenance office in the county where the damage occurred.

Claims must be filed within a year from the date of the damage.

By law, DOT or its insurer, the state Insurance Reserve Fund, has 180 days after you file to decide if your claim will be paid or denied.

In a denial letter, DOT says it’s not legally liable “unless it had notice of the defect prior to the incident in question and failed to make a repair in a reasonable time.”

That means if DOT “did not know of a defective condition, it cannot be held responsible for not repairing it.”

DOT knows where many potholes are.

It claims in its latest annual report that it patched about 679,300 potholes in fiscal year 2020, which ended last June.

The largest listed settlement in 3 years was $2,271.

Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve (www.thenerve.org). Contact him at 803-254-4411 or rick@thenerve.org.