And then what? Late at night, unfamiliar countryside, two hours from home, friendly people willing to help but precious little help to offer. The spare is one of those wretched donuts you would never drive home on on a fast-moving, pothole-strewn freeway late at night; there was towing service, but no actual help (as in new tires and wheels).
Next day the wheel and tire were replaced (money can be magical), and she heard more than once that she should send the eyebrow-raising bill to the state.
Tempting, but no. While it's true she absolutely didn't see the hole coming in the rainy dark, whose fault is it really that she hit it? The state's? She wishes, but no. It's her own fault.
The snow has been heavy and repetitive, much plowing happening, gouges in road surfaces everywhere, old patches popping out again due to the freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycle -- no pothole can come as a surprise in this season after THAT season, and after the blithe announcements after the first dusting months ago that the chemical supply and the overtime payroll funds were already exhausted. And that was long before it REALLY snowed.
Cassandra recently spent a few weeks in a place where it is not uncommon for drivers to drive over people sleeping in the road at night. They sleep there because either 1. they are drunk, or 2. the road is warm, or 3. both of the above. There are no streetlights. Drivers drive over the sleepers because ... well, that is where Cassandra begins to mumble uncertainly. After all, a log in the road is something a driver would notice and stop for. There are many things the size of a sleeping person that a driver would see and stop for. Why not notice and stop for or dodge a sleeping person?
Why not notice and stop for or dodge a pothole?
So, whose responsibility is the bill? Cassandra's. Damn.
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