Sky news has a story about Simon Moss, an extremely unfortunate cyclist who was badly
hurt when he hit a pothole nine inches deep in Stony Stratford. I’ve seen some big potholes in
Derbyshire roads but nine inches deep is extravagant. It is also claimed that the pothole was inspected by Milton Keynes Council three days before the crash. Council pothole inspectors are not pothole fillers presumably. At least they are likely to be up to speed on diversity issues - there is that compensation.
We spend a fair amount of time on Derbyshire roads and
potholes are a real menace, worse than cyclists. While driving along a country
lane, eyes glued to the road watching out for the next pothole, I am only able to take fleeting glances at the glories of spring.
In my limited experience some counties are worse than
others too. For example Nottinghamshire seems even worse than Derbyshire although a
compensating factor here is that Nottinghamshire scenery isn’t usually worth
looking at.
After a spell of rain, the worst potholes are those deep
ones at the side of the road which look like harmless puddles because they are
full of rainwater. I hit one of those with an almighty clunk only a few weeks
ago. It has been patched now but that’s another thing – the quality of the
patching varies enormously. Sometimes neat and smooth and sometimes it looks as
if someone dumped a bucket of asphalt in the hole and jumped on it to flatten
it down. Better than just inspecting it I suppose.
4 comments:
I do a bit of cycling, and when you see them the dilemma is whether to risk running over them, or swerving to avoid and getting clipped by a passing vehicle. Disguising themselves as shallow puddles is a mean trick, but that won't bother me. I'm not going out on the bike in the rain. It's bad enough risking death, without the added inconvenience of getting wet.
KCC have an evil fiddle going on with these road menaces.
I won't bore you with the details, but the upshot is that there's only a small window of opportunity to get compensation due to the timing of an original report, and the repair being carried out.
But then KCC are very good at doing bugger all about anything - looking at their eye-watering salaries, they need huge desks for all their papers, expenses etc.
I agree with you about bikes too, and Sam's 'false puddle' nightmare, we have plenty of those around here, because the lanes are used as rat-runs owing to the traffic lights and roads in the village centre being totally ill-equipped to deal with the traffic.
KCC know this and ignore the problem all the time.
Sorry, rant over...
North Staffs is a disaster zone, once the top surface is fully breached some potholes seem to grow inches per day. Noticablty though that a large proportion are formed at the sites of previous utility company work. Roads fully surfaced and then left alone remain in much better condition for years. One longer term answer would be to insist full reinstatement of surfaces after utility work was done - full resurfacing of the entire carriageway area not just leaving a bit of ashphalt squidged into a trench.
Sam - a problem we encounter is cyclists suddenly swerving into the road to avoid roadside potholes spotted at the last second or two. There is no time for the cyclist to check following traffic so it is all down the the driver behind and their reactions.
Scrobs - our situation isn't quite that bad. Potholes are repaired but oddly enough not all of them. We see recent patches close to old potholes as if their is some kind of formula and even if a pothole is obviously a pothole it isn't filled because the formula says not.
Woodsy - I've noticed that. The utility work seems to leave weaknesses which break up sooner than they should.
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