To think there are more potholes than usual?

[malificent7]

More potholes but always roadworks...why?

I'm in Glasgow and every road looks like it has been bombed. There is a Facebook group specifically about this issue and it has even organised protests outside the city chambers. Every day, people are posting photos of huge craters in the road or blown-out tyres/buckled alloys because they've driven through what they thought was a puddle. People are taking the council to court because they keep lying about road inspections and wriggling out of paying for the damage.

I work in a neighbouring council area and the roads are noticeably better even just a few miles away but as soon as I'm back in Glasgow, it's back to driving like I'm in a bobsleigh. People are scared to drive at the speed limit because they don't know what the condition of the road is up ahead; drivers are spending more time studying the road surface ahead instead of what's going on around them; and cars are suddenly braking or swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid potholes.

No money is being spent on proper resurfacing, they just fill it with a bit of cheap tar and tap it down with a shovel. Great until it crumbles three weeks later! They also installed a load of speed bumps near me using the same cheap shite and they all disintegrated within three months, so a whole team had to come back out and spend another full day doing them properly

It’s the freeze thaw effect from a particularly harsh winter. Rain gets in the cracks, freezes & expands and pushes bits apart. Melts, re freezes and repeats. Once a small hole forms it’s quickly pulled apart more by cars etc.

Councils don’t seem to care this year mind, least not round here.

The problem with reporting them is that a photo is required - not easy to stop, pull over and take a photo on a dark, wet country road.

We dont need a photo to report on fixmystreet. they are really really bad here, cars are getting wrecked and I don't know how cyclists are navigating them. There is one area near me where it's not a pot hole half the road surface is missing.

I think there are numerous reasons

The roads weren't designed for the amount of traffic
Repair has been done on the cheap
Weather, lack of rain has dried out the soil, and loosened the bottom support laher
not enough money to replace the roads,, filling in pot holes is not working, roads need total replacement not just resurfacing.

there was a phone in on local radio and some people had harrowing tales of accidents being caused.

Absolutely this.
I've been to lots of European countries over many years. Different climates between them. How do they manage to have consistently good roads? With rain, very cold winters, very hot summers.

I read somewhere that they have been starting to use recycled plastic to fill in potholes in some areas.

Dreadful here too. Even when they eventually come to repair holes, the workmanship 90% of the time is so bad that the holes are opening up again within days!

It's not just potholes now, either. There are roads actually subsiding in our area. To avoid driving with wheels on one side of car from being on a completely different level from those on the other side of the car, many drivers are resorting to straddling the centre of the road (which no longer has lines marking it, as road markings seem to be a thing of the past, which is another issue ...).

Every car journey has become like a real-life video arcade game, where you have to avoid all the obstacles and other vehicles that are also winding around trying to avoid the obstacles! I'm not sure how many lives I have left.

Round my way ...

Loads here.
Costing me money too -
Had to have tracking and balancing done for my car. Must be costing everyone!

you dont have to take a photo to report it though

I won't buy "its the weather" argument either. I'm from Europe and the weather over there is more extreme, yet - no freaking potholes. Recently been there to visit my family so I can tell.. while in my town (in UK) there are LOADS. They do get repaired, but not properly methinks, as they reappear pretty fast.. there was one absolutely massive, taken down dozen or so cars in one day and was bitched about a lot on the local FB page.. this morning I'm driving - hooray, its back there, cheerfully grinning at my tyres..

It's also the standard of the road construction and overall maintenance. If the lower layers have become weakened then just resurfacing the top and patching it will not last 5 minutes in heavy traffic or when it becomes waterlogged or frozen. The weather might not initiate potholes but very wet weather can make them get worse quickly.

A lot of roads probably need full depth reconstruction but minor roads are never going to get to the top of the list for that.

Best thing would be to include it when the water companies come along to build the new sewers that will be needed to prevent these outfall overflows, that will be a whole new scale of roadworks.

I don’t think it’s the weather either, what it is I don’t know…

It's our new sport locally, pot hole slalom. 😁

I think the councils are only patching when it gets dangerous and they might get sued. In the mean time I've discovered that tiny rural lanes now have fewer pot holes than the main roads, and it's safer to bumble through the fields than go by A road.

3 popped tyres since January, 2 were at the same time. Salisbury plain has loads of battered cratered roads or my driving is just bad.

Really bad here as well.
I have an 88 XR2 that had been lowered at some point in its life. The pot holes are so bad this year that trying to navigate them in a lowered car became such an utter nightmare that I've had factory springs put back on it.
It takes the fun out of driving when you are playing dodge the pothole.