Potholes Ending The Life Of Cars Early
We can drive our cars for years, have unlimited warranties, thousands of miles on the clock and yet more and more vehicles are ending their working life from something as simple as a pothole.
The state of British roads has declined drastically to the point of the RAC reporting the current situation with an aggressive flair.
The Independent newspaper has reported on the RAC claims, printing that half a million potholes were reported during the year of 2017 alone across 161 authorities. This is a 44% increase on 2015. They also claim that even this figure could be underestimated and figure of 674,000 or so was more likely.
Hitting a pothole at any speed can damage suspension struts and parts, making a vehicle uneconomical to repair. Proving that a pothole was to blame together with the long process of photographs and democracy, can get in the way of an insurance claim. After all, how do you prove your that is was nothing more than bad maintenance that caused your suspension to fail.
The RAC went on to report that it knew of 14,220 broken shock absorbers, springs and buckled wheels that were RAC breakdown cover callouts.
You can only guess what level of damage occurred across all the breakdown emergency services and the motorists who called out private garages, or those who managed to coast the car back home.
Older cars have a bigger problem. The cost to repair can be more than the actual worth of the vehicle itself.
What Is The Pothole Solution
Within a Brexit era, potholes like most other political things are not getting the front line news it deserves and even though back in October Phillip Hammond announced a huge injection of money for British roads, we all know it will take years or roadworkâs, road cones and delayed journeys before we get anywhere near fixing the real problem. By then, a new wave of pothole will have appeared.
It is not that this is a negative outlook, but more that this issue has been facing us for years and with previous promises we are nowhere making progress.
Martin Tett claims that local authorities are fixing a pothole every 21 seconds, quite astonishing really, to how may per minute they will need to repair to catch up with the problem. However, still impressive even if there still is a way to go.
Out of the 30 billion offered to fixing our roads, 6.5 billion should find their way to local authorities to help with the pothole situation, however that is by 2021. Wonder how many cars get taken off the road in that time?