Hi,
I was driving my Mini Cooper (2011) on my new housing development. I drove over a speed bump which was quite high, and as the car came down from the speed bump, the bottom of the car (sump tank) caught a raised drain directly after the speed bump. This resulted in the entire engine oil being leaked across the road.
I didn't realise until around quarter mile down the road the oil light came on. I didn't drive the car any further and had to have it towed to a garage.
The garage have said that it doesn't look to have damaged the engine, and it will cost £800 to fix everything due to no after market parts being available.
However, I was hoping to get some advice on how to proceed. The roads aren't the responsibility of the Council yet, and are technically meant to be maintained by a site management company. They have refused to admit it's their fault.
I'm not sure whether to:
1) Go through our insurance and call on their services to repair the vehicle and attempt to reclaim the costs from the site management.
2) Pay the repair costs ourselves and file a small claims court case to try and build a case to recuperate the costs.
There were no signs on the road to say raised drains would be higher than the rest of the surface. The speed limit is 20mph which wouldn't have been exceeded due to only just turning out of our street and having to brake to go over the high speed bump.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on the best way to deal with this.
I have attached a picture of the drain and road after the incident. As you can see the oil has poured out after coming in contact with the drain. The speed bump is located where the picture was taken from.