Quebec woman tells story of rock hitting her windshield while driving on highway

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.

Hillary Cohen says she is still shaken by what happened on the evening of April 4, as she drove with her husband along Highway 40 east in Montreal’s St-Laurent borough.

“As we were approaching (Highway) 13, we saw what looked like a meteor coming towards us, and it was about eight inches in diameter,” she told Global News.

Cohen believes the piece of debris came from the road when another vehicle drove over a pothole. After posting the incident on social media she says they also heard from other motorists who got flat tires or broken windshields in the same area that evening.

According to CAA, it can be tricky should someone consider making a claim against the Quebec government for pothole damage.

“It’s a tough path to get compensation from either the city or the transport ministry,” said spokesperson Nicolas Ryan. “You have to prove two things. First, that they knew about the pothole and (also) that they did nothing about it, and that’s up to the citizen to get that information as well.”

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Cohen said she is waiting to hear from the others who also had their cars damaged.

“I wanted to work on something together because we were all affected by this,” she explained.

A Transports Québec spokesperson says the authority can’t comment on the incident with the windshield because the motorist didn’t report it to them.

In the statement they say on the evening in question they issued an advisory on the social media platform, X, that the Highway 13 on-ramp to Highway 40 east was closed because of lost cargo from a vehicle.

According to the transport ministry, “on the night of April 4 to 5, 2024 around 12:32 a.m., the Ministry received a report from the Sûreté du Québec about a vehicle that had been damaged by debris while traveling on the A-40 Est near the overpass of the A-13. The incident reported by the SQ is possibly due to the loss of cargo from a vehicle reported (on X).”

The spokesperson also writes, “punctures linked to the presence of potholes were reported on the A-40 West near the A-13 after the storm. These potholes were filled with cold mix during the night from Friday to Saturday. Remember that the user whose vehicle was struck by debris (the incident reported by the SQ) was not traveling in this lane, but in the east direction.”

Cohen and her husband are anxious to get to the bottom of what caused the accident.

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