To bring up potholes again

[3smallpups]

I mean I know I am it’s been done to death but honestly the roads are just so bad it’s farcical.
i drove about fifty miles today in Kent and Sussex , mainly on A roads but everywhere was riddled with potholes. In many instances so big they had road cones in.
my local Facebook pages are full of pothole location warnings and multiple burst tyres with a line of cars awaiting rescue is not uncommon.
the roads are just not fit for purpose.
must be lethal for cyclists and motorbikes.
im quite old and the roads have never been this bad.
surely it needs to be a priority?
it seems like we all just moan , some bits get patched up and that’s it . Really feel that a safe road system is a bit fundamental to a civilised country ?

The recent terrible weather has created a lot of new holes and made existing ones worse. The councils can't start fixing them until it's a bit dryer. Yes they're horrendous, but given the magnitude you're being unreasonable to expect them all to be fixed immediately. They'll get fixed over the next few months and then the whole thing will start again in December. We're experiencing so much more rain than ever before, we are going to have to get used to terrible roads.

It’s the rain. We’ve had relentless rain here for weeks. They can’t repair them properly, so they do temporary repairs but the rain eventually ruins those and so the cycle continues. I can’t remember a time when we’ve had so much rain do this long where I am and where the roads have consequently been so bad, but the sheer number of potholes to fix is unlikely to be sorted any time soon here. We have whole parts of roads being washed away.

YANBU. The road up to our estate is SO bad now. I have no idea how my tyres are still going

My friend had to have very extensive maxillofacial surgery after hitting a pothole whilst riding her bike to work. She was able to go private because she sued the council for literally tens of thousands of pounds because two people had previously reported the pothole and the council hadn't fixed it. She was awarded a hell of a lot of money because she was permanently disfigured - she literally doesn't look like the same person. I won't cycle to work in the dark now - has to be daylight so that I can see that the road is safe and in one piece.

Just this week a few in my routes have been repaired. But they just get patched and will fail again. In one main road the cars are swerving g because they are so bad. It’s shocking.

They’ve got so bad in what feels like a relatively short space of time - it’s so dangerous, not only to drivers but to cyclists - it’s impossible to see where they are sometimes when they are full of water but even when you can see them it’s dangerous because you can’t just start veering on to the other side of the road to avoid them. I’ve no idea how I haven't blown all of my tyres tbh, every day I seem to clunk a pothole at least 3 times.

It can’t just be the rain. In Britain we had always had rain. They must be using cheaper road surfacing materials because in my 35 years of driving I have never see potholes so bad.

It’s awful round here. It’s really dangerous driving after dark as you can’t really see the ones filled with water particularly when you have an SUV with lights on full beam up your arse

Exactly this and this week in the dark with the continuous rain it’s been hell. The streetlights aren’t bright enough or close enough together either.

It seems kind of silly having mandatory annual MoT tests for vehicles, to ensure that they are roadworthy and safe, when councils actively sabotage this by neglecting to keep the roads safe, and contributing to all of the unsafe/misaligned tyres and chassis that are a sure recipe for accidents. Maybe it's their way of urging everybody to switch to massive SUVs... which doesn't exactly tally with explicitly stated government policy on climate matters...

It's even more absurd when they put speed bumps on a road where you already have to drive slowly and swerve around the potholes.

I'm not one of these people who thinks that your council tax (not to mention your VED and fuel duty, and tax on that fuel duty) ONLY pays for having your bins emptied and roads kept in a reasonable state of repair - but those are very much included in what it's supposed to cover.

I fully accept it’s been wet but it’s the same in northern France and their roads are nowhere near as bad
I agree I think it’s cheap repairs , which are actually just a waste of money

Honestly, I think the council were lucky that it wasn't hundreds of thousands. Your poor friend.

Not that we should have to, but this underlines why you should always report potholes ASAP - even if the council doesn't repair them quickly, they are then liable for any damage that they cause and can't claim ignorance.

Or just cheap surfacing in the first place. I think I read somewhere that they use thinner, cheaper road surfacing to mar the roads now.

I either go on Fix My Street or the Cycling UK reporting facility - every single time. Some councils engage with them, some don't. Have to say that I reported one at the start of a bus lane at a bus stop a few weeks back - it was a collapsed drain right where you'd step off the bus. Manchester City Council fixed it within 24 hours bless them.

(it's a while ago now but I think the dental bill for my friend was c.£50k, and then there was a huge chunk for disfiguration on top of that). Not small change is it?

Hold my beer...
I live in West Oxfordshire and we literally all drive like drunks, swerving round the massive potholes. One local councillor updates daily on the new ones and the filled in ones (badly) that last about a week before they are craters again.

It's common to see a row of cars that have just hit a pothole and are waiting for recovery, and I've lost count of the fractured coil springs I've had!

Meanwhile the actual council just spent thousands on removing the UK flags that have sprung up at all the roundabouts (I'm not keen on those due to the politics behind them but the money could be better spent!)

DD1 lives in Plymouth and says her roads are no where near as bad as ours and I agree. It's DIRE here.

But we’ve always had bad weather and pot holes used to be more of a rarity. In recent years, it’s rare to find a road without potholes. It’s extremely dangerous.

Good for you - much more proactive than everybody just grumbling about it between themselves and leaving the councils to get away with inertia.

That's a colossal dental bill - surely it's plain as day that, with somebody requiring that much dental work as a result of somebody else's blatant negligence, it's going to go far beyond 'just' the dental work in the impact on their life. All of the trauma, losing your original looks (and thus your familiar identity), time off work, all that you weren't able to do in the meantime...

To be honest, I'd have said that fair compensation for all that she was forced to go through was worth millions. Maybe, if councils were forced to contemplate the likelihood of being liable for gigantic compensation payouts, it might just focus their minds somewhat on actually doing their job properly.

Even if motorists were able to fairly deduct the costs of vehicle repairs, loss of time/earnings, inconvenience etc. caused directly by unmaintained roads from the VED/council tax, that might also train the authorities to realise that they are responsible for incurring huge costs - if they were actually liable for them themselves and couldn't just brush them off as the motorists'/cyclists'/pedestrians' problem and not theirs.

A result of poor quality repairs, infrastructure crumbling, utilities digging up roads and caring less for the mess, huge increases in population density and road usage... blaming rain is an excuse, lack of funds (doesn't explain crap repairs when they are done), inept running of services is at the heart of much! Just watched a five man crew, watching one chap, pour tarmac into a soaking wet puddle! Proves the point about services not working or vfm! You now have to drive with eyes on road, ahead too, and swerving holes is becoming something of a national sport!

How on earth can they blame rain for it? Houses are routinely built from similarly robust stone/brick/concrete materials and they don't just develop big holes in the walls every time it rains hard!

Yes, good quality building materials cost more and may take longer to instal; but surely it's worth the one-time investment? The Romans used to use bricks and cobbles for roads, and plenty of those are still pretty much intact thousands of years later!

It might just be something to do with the proliferation of massive electric SUVs weighing more than two tonnes being used to drive 150 yards to the Co-Op because it's raining.

It’s like driving on the sodding moon.

Although, our local council have just spent £80k on flags, so they clearly have their priorities in order.

It's awful here too. Some of them are huge! One that was fixed two weeks ago is already fully back, it's ridiculous.

Anyone else noticed road repairs only last a few months lately?
There’s a petition about making them last longer if anyone’s interested:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760798

Worth a look: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760798
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