To be shocked at the state of roads

[BenefitWaffle]

In the last year especially so many roads seem to be in a terrible state. I now drive main roads whilst keeping an eye out for pot holes. And some pot holes are so deep. It is like driving in a developing country. Only the motorways seem okay still.
Is it this bad where you live?

It's awful here too plus all our roads keep flooding! One now has its own trip advisor reviews 😂

Oh yes got stung by one last week in Peak District. Had to be recovered home as tyre was destroyed and couldn’t drive another 15miles on it . Managed to limp it to a pub while I waited 😂

It's terrible.

I've had a really bad time with the tyres on my car - have had three punctures all requiring new tyres in about 8 months. I'm hyper-paranoid about it now.

So this means that driving on the roads that are potholey and just generally raggedy, sometimes I feel like I might have a flat only to stop and realise it's the road surface.

Our estate was apparently "resurfaced" last summer. I say "apparently" because while they did put a new surface down, they didn't actually fill the worst of the potholes, so they actually ended up worse than before. It's mental.

Our roads are so embarrassing. I travel abroad for work often and I can barely think of a country with worse roads at the moment.

It is bad, but just to make you all jealous, our entire road, and most of the village was entirely taken up and relaid last year. All the pavements too. Except a length just outside our house.... Which is terrible, and why they didn't go all the way round is a constant mystery.

The patching is a problem. There is a length of road just outside the village, and every month they come and patch a different hole, but there is always another hole next to the other, which doesn't quite meet the repair criteria.... So they leave it, then have to come back, and again, and again.... It makes no sense. And what's with the filling in of a long crack, but for the same reason, not going to the ends if the crack, but only doing the middle.

The downside is now everyone speeds, because the road surface is so good.

Sussex here and appalling
Spent £200 having tyre rim straightened last week
Some roads are so bad that there are home made warning signs attached to pot holes .
I often take the four wheel drive out instead of my lovely little eco friendly car as it's so much better with the potholes.
Even driving way under the speed limit, on the a road that runs through our village is risking a tyre issue.
My husband recently came home from two weeks in India and was shocked by how much better the roads were out there.

YANBU, it is awful here in East Midlands/countryside.

I don't especially like driving, but even more so now that I'm constantly nervous about not being able to avoid a pothole if there's oncoming traffic or another car in the next lane to me. Feel like i'm constantly on edge and gripping my steering wheel!

Hit a big pothole in December, which I couldn't avoid due to lorry on other side of road, and it blew out my tyre, had to be recovered by AA. It went with an almighty bang and really shook me, lucky DH was with me.

They did just repair a whole country road near my house, it was littered in too many potholes to count and was a 60mph speed limit. I did laugh that they gave up trying to repair the individual potholes and just repaired the entire stretch of road.😅 I'm glad they've repaired it, but it had been that way since September last year and you had to see it to believe it really.

They seem to be repairing the country roads here quicker than the city center which I am surprised about.

It's the worst it's ever been round my way. So many pot holes everywhere. The pavements aren't much better. It's like the council has just given up. I don't know what else they can do. They're broke. There's nothing to cut.

Have name changed for this...

I work for a local council in the highways department, for a large rural county. We spend millions of £s every year on maintenance, in fact for the last ten years, all our funding for transport infrastructure investment has also been spent on maintenance, and we still have a network that is deteriorating.

Years of govt underinvestment, plus a changing climate have worsened the state of the roads. We did an exercise a few years ago in estimating how much money we'd need to bring our network up to scratch, and it was something like 20 times the annual maintenance allocation, for the next 10 years, just to stand still.

My area isn't terrible for potholes but the lack of road markings drives me crazy. There's one roundabout I go onto and I need to be in the middle of 3 lanesto get to my junction and it's pretty dangerous navigating it with no white lines.

Absolutely awful round here - one road is now being referred to a “xxxxxx Canyon”. The council merrily lost over £50million to poor investments though and are basically
non-existent services wise.

So bad I wouldn't cycle on the roads - and I used to cycle everywhere. Pavements aren't much better.

People generally travel faster down country roads (60 mph speed limit) ?

So the potential to do serious damage to cars is much worse at higher speeds ?

It's grim in Scotland too. Hit one hidden in a puddle on my bike a few months ago. Nearly came off the bike and got a huge puncture.

We live quite rurally and the roads are appalling, often single track too so difficult to avoid them. It's fairly easy to report them on our councils website but they take weeks to get repaired (because they're more minor roads I imagine).

The sides of the roads are deteriorating fast too, I guess this is from the run off water from the fields following the heavy rain.

Almost impossible to claim for any pot-hole related damage to your car too which makes it even more frustrating.

Hampshire here. Our air bag suspension went on one massive pothole and the council wouldn't pay out as they say it's a private road but the businesses dispute this. Cost a grand to fix. Also had a gash in our run flat tyre which cost a lot to replace compared with normal tyres. Our local area is really bad. It really is a bellwether for the state of our Country.

Visited Brighton recently and bar the motorway my god the roads were so bad, shockingly so

Even the motorways that I use have potholes now, quite alarming at 65 mph.

Same here in Wales. I live near Cardiff in a “leafy” area and the potholes are shocking; my parents live in a deprived area 15 miles away and they’re just as bad there.

I think it’s partly climate change - the sheer amount of water this year has washed away a lot of substructures, then we had a sudden cold snap in late January that opened all the cracks. That was it, the roads fell apart.

But, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem if they were fixed properly/ resurfaced. Which brings us back to money. We’re fucked.
Why oh why is there still new road building when the money could be so much better spent on maintaining what we have?

My council has wasted millions on buying a failing shopping centre so now has no money to sort the roads. They’re a total mess & causing lots of damage.

They keep sending Pete off bins round with a barrow of stones & a tub of craft glue as they last until the next rainfall then horrendous again.

I sometimes remember to use fixmystreet when I get home to report a big pothole/road markings erased, and often find it has been marked 'fixed' by the highways people when it has not been fixed. Not sure why that would be.

Yep. We are in sussex and it's truly awful. I went a good 15 years without getting a puncture. I now do a couple a year. We have noticed when we travel outside of Sussex the roads get much better. Suffolk and Norfolk had lovely roads.

I swear some repairs last 1 week where I live.

Bedfordshire its bad. We've had a few fixed which which weeks later back into the same state..
Doesn't help they spent ages changing the town road system and painting it all etc only to realise months later it didn't work so now had to spend time changing it back..anyone with common sense could see it was a issue before they did it.

This was a pothole near me the other week. It has thankfully been repaired but it was there for at least a month, and they only fixed this one and not the other massive ones on the same stretch of road. It's absolutely horrendous round here (Cheshire).