Wet weather: Roads damaged and drivers are counting the cost

Ongoing, widespread rain across Australia's eastern states has caused many roads to fall apart, with motorists bearing the brunt of the damage.

During October, NRMA's roadside assistance crews responded to 13,020 call outs for tyre and wheel damage in NSW and ACT.

This is a 42 per cent increase on the 9167 calls they had during October 2021.

So far this financial year, they've been called to 53,400 wheel and tyre calls across NSW and the ACT. That's an average of 407 calls a day since July 1.

"Damage is often so significant that it's not just a matter of changing a tyre. Damage is structural, in which case we have to call a tow," NRMA's Peter Khoury said.

"Depending on the scale of the damage, it can be thousands [of dollars to repair].

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"There are periods throughout the rain over the last year where demand for tow trucks has increased by 300 per cent."

While many Victorian roads have also suffered widespread flood and rain damage, the RACV declined requests to provide data on how many tyre and wheel damage calls it has attended.

Prolonged wet weather and La Nina systems predicted to bring above median rainfall for November to January for most of eastern Australia, means road repairs are being delayed.

"Because of the sheer volume of rain and the continuation of bad weather, it's not just that there are a lot of potholes, it's meant that councils can't get out to fix them," Mr Khoury said.

"A small pothole very quickly becomes a large one and council needs dry weather to fix them. The challenge that we face with this sort of weather is that it's never ending."

While temporary pothole fixes can be made during short periods of dry weather, structural fixes take longer and need more significant stretches of dry weather.

Mr Khoury said some local government areas in the ACM readership have been hit particularly hard by road damage.

Roadside assistance crews have been called to 2609 vehicles in the ACT with damaged tyres or wheels since July 1, 2022.

There have been 1089 calls to Lake Macquarie, 1076 in Newcastle, both in in NSW's Hunter region; 1023 in Wollongong in the state's Illawarra region and 2596 in the NSW Central Coast.

Other tyre and wheel damage calls across NSW have been to: Bathurst (196), Maitland (314), Mid North Coast (669), Mid-Western (1126), Orange (175), Parkes (67), Tweed (677) and Wagga Wagga (327).

Often, motorists don't even know they're about to drive into a pothole, Mr Khoury said.

"One of the challenges of driving in this weather is because of the volume of rain we've had, people can't see what's under the water on the road. So, they're driving through heavy rain and they can't see the potholes, so they're driving right into them," he said.

RACV general manager automotive services, Jackie Pedersen, provided ACM with a written response to questions.

"RACV retains data for the type of assistance calls we receive across the state, i.e. tyre replacement, mechanical breakdown or windscreen damage, but not for the assumed cause of those types of assistance. We cannot say with certainty that any variations in the number of assistance calls we receive is attributable to a specific road condition," she wrote.

Got a pothole or road damage story to share? Email nadine.morton@austcommunitymedia.com.au