What to Do After Hitting a Pothole in Hemet: The Body Damage Most Drivers Miss

Why Spring Is Pothole Season in the Inland Empire

Pothole damage spikes every spring in California for a simple reason: water. Winter rain seeps into existing pavement cracks. Cold nights cause that water to expand. Trucks and traffic pound the weakened spots. By March and April, the holes are everywhere — especially on State Highway 74, the I-215 corridor, Florida Avenue, and the surface streets connecting Hemet, San Jacinto, and Menifee.

The 2025-2026 winter was unusually wet for Southern California. Local public works crews are catching up, but the lag between damage and repair is months. Until then, drivers are dealing with it on their own — and a lot of them are dealing with it wrong.

The 30-Second Inspection Most Drivers Stop At

After a hard hit, most drivers do this:

• Pull over (good)
• Walk around the car
• Look at the tire that took the hit
• Look at the wheel
• If those look fine, drive on

This catches the obvious stuff: a flat tire, a bent wheel, a cracked rim. Those problems announce themselves. Your tire pressure light comes on or you hear a wobble.

The damage we see at the shop weeks later is the damage that doesn't announce itself. That's where the real money goes.

The 5-Minute Inspection That Actually Saves You Money

1. Get under the front of the car

Crouch down and look at the front of the vehicle from about a foot off the ground. Specifically check:

• The lower bumper cover. Most modern cars have a plastic lip that hangs below the bumper. If you hit a pothole edge hard, this is the first thing to scrape. Look for fresh scuff marks, missing paint, or a section that's hanging loose at the corner. A torn or partially detached bumper cover is a $400-1,200 repair if caught early. Drive around with it for two weeks at highway speed and the airflow rips it the rest of the way off — now it's a full bumper replacement.
• The wheel well liner. That black plastic tray inside your front fender. Pothole impacts can crack the front edge or pop it loose from its clips. If it's hanging, road debris will tear it apart on the highway and damage what's behind it.
• The engine splash shield. The plastic panel under the engine. Drag marks here mean the car bottomed out hard. If it's loose or torn, it can hit the ground at speed and rip out wires or hoses.

2. Check the rocker panels and side skirts

The rocker panel is the structural section between your front and rear wheels along the bottom of the door. On most modern cars, there's a cosmetic plastic side skirt covering it. After a side-loaded pothole hit, look for:

• Scrape marks running along the bottom edge
• A slight gap or dent where the skirt meets the door
• Loose clips that make the skirt vibrate at certain speeds

Damage here is often missed because it's on the side facing away from how you typically walk up to the car. Walk around the entire vehicle and crouch on both sides.

3. Open the doors and check the gaps

Stand back and look at the gap between each door and the body. The gap should be uniform — same width at the top, middle, and bottom of every door. If one gap is suddenly tighter at the top and wider at the bottom (or vice versa), the body has shifted slightly. That's a sign of underlying frame stress that won't show up any other way without a measurement system.

This same check applies to the hood and trunk gaps where they meet the fenders.

4. Look at the headlight aim

That night, drive somewhere with a wall in front of you. Headlights point straight ahead and slightly down. After a hard frontal pothole hit, headlight assemblies can shift in their mounts. If one beam now points noticeably higher, lower, or to the side compared to the other, the assembly is loose or the mount is broken. This is both a safety issue (you'll blind oncoming drivers) and a sign something underneath shifted.

5. Drive in a straight line and let go briefly

On an empty road at 25-35 mph, briefly relax your grip on the wheel (don't take your hands off — just stop steering). The car should track straight for a few seconds. If it pulls hard left or right, the alignment is off. That can happen from a pothole even when nothing looks visibly wrong.

Damage You Can't See

The hardest part of pothole damage is what's hidden. After a hard impact, internal damage can include:

• Bent control arms. The arms connecting your wheels to the chassis. These are designed to take some abuse but can be bent by a square-edged pothole hit. Drives fine for a few weeks, then you start eating tires unevenly.
• Damaged shock or strut. A blown-out strut leaks slowly. The car feels mushy or bouncy over bumps.
• Cracked subframe mount. Rare but serious. Causes vibration and gradually worsens.
• Stress on the unibody. Modern cars use a unibody design where the entire body shell is structural. A hard hit can stress mounting points without causing visible damage to the panels themselves.

This is the kind of damage that frame and body specialists catch with a measurement system. Visual inspection misses it. If the impact was hard enough to bottom out the car, leave a mark on the wheel, or set off your tire pressure light, get it on a frame measurement before you put another month of miles on it.

When to File an Insurance Claim

Pothole damage falls under collision coverage, not comprehensive. That matters because:

• If you only carry comprehensive (cheaper), pothole damage isn't covered. It only kicks in for hail, theft, falling objects, animals, etc.
• If you carry collision, you can file a claim — but you'll pay your deductible.
• The repair has to exceed your deductible to be worth filing. With a $1,000 deductible and $1,200 in damage, you're paying $200 out-of-pocket effectively, plus your rates may go up.

If the damage looks under $2,000 and your deductible is $1,000, it often makes more sense to pay out of pocket and avoid the claim. Drive Auto Body offers a $500 off deductible credit on insurance claims if you do choose to file — that brings the math closer to break-even.

Some California cities also accept pothole damage claims directly against the city if a known hazard caused damage. Riverside County's process is slow and rarely pays, but it's worth filing if your damage is significant. Take photos of the pothole and your car at the scene.

The Drive Auto Body Pothole Inspection (Free, No Obligation)

If you've hit a pothole hard enough to worry about it, bring it in. We do a free 15-minute visual inspection, lift the car if needed, and give you an honest yes-or-no on whether anything needs work. No pressure, no upsell. Half the cars we look at after a pothole hit are fine. The other half have something the owner missed — usually under the bumper or in the wheel well.

We're at 33975 State Highway 74 in Hemet. Walk-ins welcome during business hours, or call (951) 268-3006 to set a time. If repair is needed, we handle insurance claims start to finish and offer the $500 deductible credit on qualifying jobs.

Don't wait six weeks until the damage compounds. The fix is always cheaper today than it'll be after another month of highway driving.