Potholes!
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Potholes are becoming an epidemic plague on UK roads!
I'm using more fuel slaloming in and out of them these days, and the rate that salt grit is being spread around isn't going to help things either.
Tempted to fill some very local ones in myself.
I'm using more fuel slaloming in and out of them these days, and the rate that salt grit is being spread around isn't going to help things either.
Tempted to fill some very local ones in myself.
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Took the car to a garage to assess the damage, regarding the clonking noise, and it transpired that I had no oil the engine.
So how silly do I feel.
But on the up side, I'm over it now.
The edges of a lot of narrow, rural roads are so potholed that they're effectively single lane as everyone has to drive down the middle. Even quite main routes have some really massive ones. My particular favourite is on the southbound side of the A275, a few miles north of Lewes. It's about a foot out from the kerb, on a bend with double white lines. To avoid it, you have to get your nearside wheels really close to the kerb, or take the bend slightly over the double white lines.
It's not just potholes, either. There's a bit of A22 where the surface undulates like a bloody switchback and some stretches have developed a novel rippled surface that makes it sound like you've got a flat tyre.
It's very distracting, too. I find I'm concentrating on the traffic far less than I would like because I'm busy looking out for the next tank-trap.
I'm not taking my bag of black top up there though!
There's a huge pothole on the sliproad from the M4 westbound to the M5 southbound. I have to mentally prepare myself to avoid it each morning.
One cyclist lost his life due to a pot-hole:
http://road.cc/content/news/21110-coroner-says-death-cyclist-killed-he-avoided-pothole-accidental
The roads have become more dangerous because of them. It is dangerous to make a driver have to spend a significant amount of concentration watching out for pot-holes rather than what's going on in front of you.
Where is the road-tax being spent? Why the stupid £30 road tax rate for oil burners?
It goes into the general pot, with all the other taxes (apparently)
It's vehicle excise duty ands it's being spent in the same places that the duty of alcohol and tobacco etc is spent.
A very good question!
The existing infrastructure is falling to bits because it is being used to absolute capacity. Hence the need to build extra capacity.
Maybe they should never have build all those motorways in the UK, when there were perfectly good A-roads they could have just resurfaced?
If our current roads and railways were in tip top condition, and the government were then going ahead to build a new high speed line, then fair enough; but, to put such a huge investment into something that is going to benefit a relatively small proportion of society when the majority of society are having to put up with sub-standard infrastructure simply does not make sense!
Fair point, but HS2 isn't going to provide that much of a relief to the current infrastructure - building new motorways or A-roads would.
Don't get me wrong, any investment in infrastructure is a good thing - but surely it should be targeted to have its benefits be as wide reaching as possible when money is so tight?
Why wouldn't it provide much of a relief? Current daily trips between London and Birmingham are 7,500 (11,700 by 2026), between London and Manchester 7,000 (12,100) and London and Leeds 4,300 (7,200). That's a lot of relieved capacity in my mind.
http://www.hs2.org.uk/sites/default/files/inserts/Demand%20and%20Appraisal%20Report%20London-West%20Midlands.pdf
(Table 3.1)
HS2 is a long-term project, so current position in the economic cycle is irrelevant.
That, and it is only servicing one corridor, meanwhile the rest of the country's infrastructure is disappearing down the gurgler.
At the end of the day, HS2 is going to happen no matter what - whether it is successful remains to be seen, but I sincerely hope that it is; however, the sheer lack of funding that has been directed to the country's roads over many years (and many successive governments) is nothing short of appalling; motorists who are being used as cash cows are having to put up with roads that are not fit for purpose, and they (and I am one of them) are quite justified in asking why such a huge investment is being made in one project that benefits relatively few, while they are paying through the nose to use existing infrastructure that is shot to bits.
You must be kidding me. In the last 40 years, money has been thrown at road schemes like there's no tomorrow - even in these anti-road times it's running at about £8.4bn per year (i.e. about a quarter of the total cost of HS2)
Then why are the roads in such a shocking state? Something is clearly amiss somewhere?
Where you have potholes you often get the loose stones from them spread across the road surface. I think it was one of these stones that was thrown up into the air by other traffic and into my windscreen.
Hitting a hefty pothole can momentarily twist the chassis and can cause cracking in the windscreen, in many cars the roofline and pillars are a load bearing part of the car.