Rolling through Quebec has cost him thousands of dollars in just a few months. Three times, Dany Ricard hit potholes that battered his BMWs and damaged his car. With each impact, the repair bill kept growing, and no road administrator paid. “Honestly, the roads are awful,” says the 40-year-old IT technician from Longueuil to Le Journal de Montréal. And for him, these aren’t mere everyday annoyances anymore.
Since the start of 2026, this motorist from Longueuil has watched his rims and tires give out. One of his cars even ended up with a broken wheel hub. By choosing used replacement parts, he has spent more than CAD 4,000 (about USD 3,000). If he had bought new parts from BMW, the bill would have topped CAD 9,000 (roughly USD 6,700). This is enough to push Dany Ricard to consider suing Longueuil and the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTSM). And this tale of pothole-related damage is far from an isolated case.
Three Pothole Hits and Two BMWs Wrecked in a Chain
At the end of March 2026, Dany Ricard was driving his BMW 330i on an on-ramp of Route 132 near Place Longueuil. A pothole on his path swallowed the front-left wheel. “It caused serious damage, including to the rim. It broke the wheel hub,” he recalls. The car was immobilized, and the initial costs stemming from the pothole damage began to pile up.
A few months later, on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, he was behind the wheel of his BMW 230i on the highway exit from Route 10 toward Taschereau Boulevard. Again, he felt a jolt, only to discover that an original rim had cracked and the tire went flat. “At that moment, I decided to replace them with sturdier rims.” He swapped in these newer rims, advertised as tougher. Yet what followed would show him that even gear advertised as sturdier can bend under certain potholes.
A Hefty Bill and the Path to Small Claims Court
Hardly a month after Saint-Jean-Baptiste, he was back on Route 132, this time near Saint-Lambert. He hit a massive pothole in the middle of the lane, and it struck his car with full force. “The hole was so big it dented both rims on the same side. Again, both rims needed replacing, along with the tires.” With the newly reinforced rims and tires now themselves in need of replacement, he opted for used parts after each incident to limit the damage, given the slim chance of reimbursement.
He filed claims with Longueuil and the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility. No reimbursement was granted. Recent data show that only about 5% of motorists who file pothole-damage claims receive compensation. Frustrated, Dany Ricard intends to pursue Longueuil and the MTSM in Small Claims Court to recover his costs. “If everyone turns a blind eye and lets it go, nothing will change. There are limits to what the public should pay,” he argues.
“If someone can show they’re a good driver, traveling at a normal speed, and there was fault on the part of the entity responsible for maintenance, the court is going to award you something,” says attorney Jean-Paul Boily, as cited by Le Journal de Montréal.
