The short version

Yes — under Collision coverage, not Comprehensive. Hitting a pothole is treated as a collision with an object, and Collision explicitly includes pothole damage.

Collision is optional in North Carolina, so a driver carrying only minimum liability has no coverage for it. And because Collision carries its own deductible, many pothole claims are not worth filing.

Why collision rather than comprehensive

Collision covers damage from your car striking another vehicle or a stationary object — a pole, a guardrail, a tree, a kerb. It includes rollover and pothole damage. Comprehensive covers non-collision events: theft, fire, flood, hail, falling objects, animal strikes and glass.

A pothole is something you hit, so it falls on the collision side. See collision vs. comprehensive for where that line sits.

Note what this means: a driver who carries Comprehensive but dropped Collision to save money has no pothole coverage.

The deductible problem

This is why most pothole damage never becomes a claim.

A bent rim, a blown tyre, or an alignment often comes in below or close to a collision deductible. Filing gains you little and still records a claim.

Suspension damage, multiple wheels, or damage discovered later can change that arithmetic. Get it assessed and quoted before deciding.

Will it count against me

Here is the part worth understanding: a pothole claim is filed under Collision, and collision claims are generally treated as at-fault events, because you struck something.

That is genuinely different from a comprehensive claim like hail or hitting a deer, where nothing was your doing. It is one more reason the deductible calculation matters here.

Claiming against the city or state

People ask about this constantly. Governments can be liable for road defects, but claims against public bodies involve notice requirements, immunity rules and evidence that the authority knew about the defect and had a reasonable opportunity to fix it.

It is worth reporting the pothole and documenting the location regardless, but treat recovery as uncertain rather than as your plan. And note that North Carolina's pure contributory negligence rule applies to such claims too — any argument that you were driving inattentively can defeat the whole thing.

What to do

Get off the road safely and inspect for obvious damage before driving on. Photograph the pothole, the location and the damage. Note the date, time and conditions. Report the hazard to the relevant road authority. Then get a repair quote before you decide about a claim.

How The Jordan Insurance Agency helps

The Jordan Insurance Agency is an independent agency in Charlotte. We will confirm whether you carry Collision at all, tell you what that deductible is, and give you a straight answer on whether a pothole repair is worth filing — usually it is not, and we will say so.