what the hell is going on with our roads.

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again - The Register
Anecdotal tales suggest the beast had developed an appetite for BMW drivers and Deliveroo couriers, wrecking at least one motor and sending a hapless e-bike rider flying.

The Register feels the pain of anyone injured in the line of duty to bring us artery-clogging treats, but BMW drivers can do one.
:D

Pictured-dean-hope-pictures-taken-810451261.jpg
 
I've never known our roads in the UK to be so bad for potholes. Some of them are at a level that could cause a serious accident. I managed to wreck 3 tyres in 4 months by hitting potholes, the last of the 3 tyres only a couple of days after fitting it, to a pothole I never saw. Run flat tyres with our roads and low profile tyres seems to be a flawed concept. The final hit was totally innocuous, travelling on the inside lane of a speed limited dual carriageway at night at a low speed.

I have also seen repairs made 50 yards from repairs not made, it makes no sense. I have also seen white paint around pot holes for weeks with nothing done and still they want to put loose clippings down on perfectly decent roads that don't seem needing of repair. To add, the person who comes up with a rapid and long last fix to this issue will make billions!
 
Last edited:
solution ? motorway tolls, like France/Italy/Germany you get used to it, if you want to get somewhere fast.
Public sector spending on roads in the United Kingdom was over 12 billion British pounds in 2021/22
annual revenue of french autoroute companies, reaching more than ten billion euros in 2017
 
I've never known our roads in the UK to be so bad for potholes. Some of them are at a level that could cause a serious accident.

My new drummer has got a Tesla and he'd only been with us a week when he hit a massive pothole in Macclesfield and it caused £10,000 worth of damage.
Two weeks ago he hit another pothole and ruined his two left wheels and tyres which was another £2000 bill.
His prices.
 
On our club ride yesterday, some of the holes we avoided would literally put you in hospital if you hit them at speed (and wreck your bike). There's a big difference between your wheel riding over the hole, to riding in the hole. Many were the latter.
I've never seen the roads as bad as they are now. We are constantly pointing out holes and crap to each other more and more than ever.
 
My new drummer has got a Tesla and he'd only been with us a week when he hit a massive pothole in Macclesfield and it caused £10,000 worth of damage.
Two weeks ago he hit another pothole and ruined his two left wheels and tyres which was another £2000 bill.
His prices.


Sounds like a well built car.
 
I'm seeing a lot recently where work is being put off, even if it means having cones out around a problem for months, until they can combine works.

There is a subsiding man hole on my way to work which is quite bad as they've coned it off narrowing the road but the signs warning you are just after a corner one side and brow of a hill the other with very little distance to react............... it won't be done until July when the road is closed for a few days for other work.
 
Local councils in London see car drivers as the enemy or cash cows.
More money is spent on traffic calming that fixing roads

Potholes = free traffic calming :p

Last time my mum came to visit us, she asked if I found myself getting followed/pulled over by the police due to my weaving all over the road to avoid the potholes & speedbumps :cry:

They recently (about a year ago) installed some speed bumps near me (fair enough, there were quite a few accidents at one of the junctions), but the signage is awful - had to slam on the brakes the first time I drove down after they installed them. See if you can spot the sign:


Now bear in mind that appears to be from winter when the trees are bare - right now that tree is in full bloom and the sign is basically invisible until you are almost level with it - i.e. about 5m from the first hump, or about 0.5s reaction time at 30mph :mad:
 
Last edited:
My new drummer has got a Tesla and he'd only been with us a week when he hit a massive pothole in Macclesfield and it caused £10,000 worth of damage.
Two weeks ago he hit another pothole and ruined his two left wheels and tyres which was another £2000 bill.
His prices.

This seems to be a thing with Teslas. Hit a big pothole and the front quarter of the car gets destroyed. A 2 ton car with large, "sporty" wheels and suspension aren't a great combo.

I've never known our roads in the UK to be so bad for potholes. Some of them are at a level that could cause a serious accident. I managed to wreck 3 tyres in 4 months by hitting potholes, the last of the 3 tyres only a couple of days after fitting it, to a pothole I never saw. Run flat tyres with our roads and low profile tyres seems to be a flawed concept. The final hit was totally innocuous, travelling on the inside lane of a speed limited dual carriageway at night at a low speed.

I have also seen repairs made 50 yards from repairs not made, it makes no sense. I have also seen white paint around pot holes for weeks with nothing done and still they want to put loose clippings down on perfectly decent roads that don't seem needing of repair. To add, the person who comes up with a rapid and long last fix to this issue will make billions!

There are already some solutions. There is a machine which can roll out a new surface in hours. But then it would derail the gravy train for contractors
 
Last edited:
They would if they mounted the disks further in. Brakes got bigger because cars got more obese :/
Brakes need to stay around the size they are because, as you say, cars are heavier.

The area with the most space on most cars today is where the brakes already are - in that pocket of otherwise essentially useless space inside the wheel.

When you say "further in", where are you envisaging they go, exactly?
 
Time to return to 38 tonne GVW on British roads. Also those single wheel axles with 5 tonnes on a single tyre. Returning to a twin tyre would asist in not damaging the surface.

It is always braking and acceleration points particularly on bends where potholes start and it is 90% HGV
Which is why they have always paid way more "road tax" and millions in fuel duty.............but not their fault that Govt's won't spend the money on roads
 
Car manufacturers pushing these stupid massive wheels with rubber band tyres in cahoots with the dealers laughing all the way to the bank.

Or probably just the 30% cut in local authority budgets since the Tories came to power.

Indeed but the buying public want them. Used to be 18", then 19", now anything 20" is "small" and i see a lot of cars now have 23" options.

Give me an SUV with 18" wheels and a decent amount of tyre rubber and who cares what they look like.
 
I have just down sized from 22 to 20s but did wonder if I should have went smaller as the rubber gain is not massive, with a black wheel you wouldn't really notice the small wheels as black alloys loose all the detail and are just black round things in the arches if avoid all that diamond cutting nonsense.
 
Last edited:
This seems to be a thing with Teslas. Hit a big pothole and the front quarter of the car gets destroyed. A 2 ton car with large, "sporty" wheels and suspension aren't a great combo.



There are already some solutions. There is a machine which can roll out a new surface in hours. But then it would derail the gravy train for contractors
Some years ago, on a train journey south to London I sat opposite the CEO of the Highways agency. Had no idea who he was but somehow we got on to loose chippings and how much damage they could cause and how much use they weren't. I absolutely support the view that there is a gravy train after said discussion, but also there are zero long term quick fixes still to this day as all break up with time.

I also appreciate how expensive it is to do anything large scale in the UK, as I know others here can talk about with far far more insight than me.
 
smaller wheels, or if you have the likes of VW's DCC(real time adaptive suspension) that probably help reduce pot-hole shock on the wheel/tyre as the motion of the body is more damped.

e: or .. big wheel trend was set by the high end cars, but the prols didn't realise they had adaptives and air suspension
 
Last edited:
I have just down sized from 22 to 20s but did wonder if I should have went smaller as the rubber gain is not massive, with a black wheel you wouldn't really notice the small wheels as black alloys loose all the detail and are just black round things in the arches if avoid all that diamond cutting nonsense.
Surely you should have gained an inch of rubber all round :confused: .
 
Back
Top Bottom