Pothole or Road Hazard: Who to Call

Call this	When	Not for
911	The hazard is causing crashes or near-misses right now — a washed-out or flooded road, an object in a live lane, a fully dark signal at a busy intersection, or a downed wire	It's a pothole or hazard drivers can see and steer around safely — that's a maintenance report, not an emergency
City public works / street department or 311	The problem is on a city-owned street — most residential and downtown roads. Many cities take potholes, signals, and signs through 311 by phone, app, or web	You're on a county road or a numbered state highway
County road department / county public works	The road is outside city limits — a rural route or a road in an unincorporated area	You're inside a city, or on a numbered US or state route
State DOT maintenance line or 511	It's a numbered state route, US route, or interstate — the state department of transportation maintains these, and many run a 511 line or a 'report a road condition' web form	It's a local city or county street
Your electric utility	A traffic signal is completely dark and it looks like a power problem — the utility restores signal power, while the city or DOT owns the signal itself	The signal is lit but stuck or flashing — that's the road authority's signal shop, not the utility

First, is this a 911 call?

Before you look up any department, decide whether the road hazard is dangerous right now or just needs fixing — because the answer changes who you call. Most potholes, missing signs, and pieces of debris are maintenance reports. But a hazard becomes a 911 call the moment the next driver could crash before they can react:

The road is washed out, collapsed, or flooded over, so a car could drop into it or be swept off.
There’s an object in a live traffic lane — a mattress, a ladder, furniture, a blown truck tire, a fallen load — and cars are swerving or braking hard around it.
A traffic signal is completely dark at a busy intersection, or a stop sign is down, and drivers are entering blind.
The road is glazed with ice and cars are already spinning or sliding, or a downed power line is in the mix.

In any of those cases, call 911, give the exact location (an address, cross street, mile marker, or direction of travel), and if it’s safe, put your hazards on and warn oncoming traffic from a distance. Do not stop in a live lane to pull debris out yourself — standing in moving traffic is how a road hazard turns into a fatality.

If the hazard is one drivers can see and steer around safely — a pothole in the shoulder lane, debris on the verge, a faded sign — it isn’t an emergency. It’s a maintenance report, and it goes to whoever owns the road.

Two neighboring cases have their own pages. A tree or large limb across the road is a clearance job with its own routing — see a tree is blocking the road. A dark signal that’s really a power outage ties back to power out on the whole street. This page is for the everyday road surface: potholes, debris, dead or damaged signals, missing signs, flooding, and ice.

Whose road is it?

Once you’ve ruled out an emergency, the only question that matters is who maintains the road, because that’s who repairs it. Roads in the US fall into three buckets:

City street. Most residential and downtown streets are city-owned. Report potholes, damaged signals, and knocked-down signs to the city’s public works or street department. Many cities route this through 311 — by phone, app, or web — which hands you a tracking number and forwards it to the right crew.

County road. Roads outside city limits — rural routes, roads in unincorporated areas — are usually maintained by the county road department or county public works. If you’re not sure whether you’re inside a city, the county line can tell you or reroute you.

State highway. Numbered state routes, US routes, and interstates are the state department of transportation’s (DOT). A route shield, a mile marker, or an interstate number is the tell that you’re on a state-maintained road. Every state DOT has a maintenance number, and many run a 511 traveler-information service — dial 511 from any phone — that takes road-condition reports and points you to the right office. Delaware’s DOT, for example, runs a 24/7 Transportation Management Center for exactly this — potholes, debris, damaged signals, obstructions — while telling you to call 911 instead for an accident or anything dangerous. That two-track split (emergency to 911, everything else to the maintenance line) is the pattern almost everywhere.

If you genuinely can’t tell which bucket you’re in, 311 (where it exists) or the non-emergency line for your local police or sheriff will get the report to the right agency. Routing to the “wrong” public number is fine — they forward it — and far better than doing nothing.

How to report it

For a non-emergency, you have more than one door, and any of them is free:

311, where your city or county has it, by phone, app, or website. It logs the report, hands you a service-request number, and forwards it to the right crew.
A DOT or city app — many transportation agencies run one specifically for potholes and road conditions, with a map pin and photo upload.
511 by phone or web for state-road conditions, run by most state DOTs.
The state DOT’s “report a road condition” web form, which lets you flag potholes, debris, damaged signs, and signal problems with a location and a description.

Whichever door you use, give the same things: the exact location (address, cross street, mile marker, and the direction of travel), which lane, and a short description — “deep pothole, right lane, eastbound.” A photo helps. Keep the tracking or service-request number so you can follow up. Crews triage by hazard, so a pothole swallowing tires on a busy artery moves faster than a cracked sign on a quiet street.

Can you claim car damage from a pothole?

If a pothole blew out a tire or bent a rim, there is often a real claims process against the city or the state DOT — but go in knowing it’s usually a long shot, because the rules are built to protect the agency.

The core hurdle is prior notice. Most jurisdictions will only pay if the agency already knew about that specific pothole — through an earlier report or an inspection — and had a reasonable chance to fix it before your car hit it. A pothole that opened up overnight rarely clears that bar. On top of that, governmental immunity shields many road agencies from ordinary negligence claims, and deadlines are tight — some require a formal notice of claim within 30, 60, or 90 days, far shorter than a normal lawsuit window.

If you want to try, do this:

Document it immediately. Photograph the pothole, the damage, and the surroundings, and note the exact location, date, and time.
Keep every receipt for the repair and any towing.
File with the right office. That’s usually city or county risk management (or the clerk), or the state DOT’s claims unit for a state highway — not the maintenance line that fixes the hole.
Get any report number from when the pothole was first called in, since prior notice is the whole game.

Realistically, your own auto insurance is frequently the faster route: pothole damage is typically a collision claim, so weigh the payout against your deductible before you sink weeks into a government claim that may be denied on immunity or notice grounds. The claim against the agency is worth filing when the damage is large and there’s evidence the pothole was reported and ignored — but treat approval as the exception, not the expectation.

Dead signals, missing signs, and debris

A dark traffic signal is one of the more dangerous everyday hazards, and its fix is often split between two owners. The city or state DOT owns the signal head and the controller box; your electric utility supplies the power. So a completely dark signal can be a utility outage rather than a broken signal. Treat the intersection as an all-way stop, and if it’s a busy junction at a busy hour, call 911 or the non-emergency police line so an officer can manage traffic. Report the outage to your utility as well — if the block around it is dark, that’s the whole-street outage case. A signal that’s lit but stuck or flashing is the road authority’s signal shop, not the utility.

A missing or knocked-down stop or yield sign can be as urgent as a dark signal, because drivers reach the intersection expecting nothing. Report it to the road authority right away, and if traffic is already conflicting, call the non-emergency police line or 911.

Debris in the road follows the same live-lane test as everything else. In a moving lane — a ladder, a mattress, a couch, a shredded tire, a load that fell off a truck — it’s a 911 call, because the next driver may not see it until they’re on it, and you should never stop in traffic to move it. Off on the shoulder with clear sightlines, it’s a routine report to the road authority.

After you report it, and “near me”

For a non-emergency, you’re in a queue, and crews prioritize by danger: a live-lane hazard or a dark signal jumps the line; a shoulder pothole waits. Big weather events — a freeze that opens potholes across a city, a storm that scatters debris — overwhelm crews all at once, so report anyway to get it in the system, expect a longer wait, and don’t assume someone else already called it in. A specific location from you helps them prioritize.

There’s no single national number for road hazards. The fastest path is: 911 if it’s dangerous right now; otherwise 311 if your area has it; otherwise search “[your city or county] public works” or “[your state] DOT” for the maintenance line or the online road-condition form, or dial 511 for state-road conditions. The non-emergency police line is the reliable fallback that will route you to the right place.

Pothole, Road Hazard, or Debris in the Road — Who Do I Call?

Who to call — and when