‘Motorists facing a plague of potholes’
DRIVERS face soaring repair bills from record numbers of potholes unless more is done to fix them, a motoring group has warned.
Patrols from roadside assistance specialists RAC said they saw one of the worst periods in 15 years for breakdowns from crumbling roads between June and September.
Their teams attended 1,810 call outs for broken suspension springs, distorted wheels and damaged shock absorbers.
Nicholas Lyes, from the RAC, said: “We fear we’re only a bad winter away from seeing a plague of potholes which authorities will struggle to repair.
“With Government data showing weekday car traffic is still not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, it’s very worrying that our patrols are still attending a higher proportion of potholerelated call-outs in relation to all the breakdowns they go out to.
“Traditionally, the spring and summer months give authorities a chance to repair and improve roads, but unfortunately it seems many roads remain in a
perilous state.” The RAC is demanding urgent action from the Government as we head into winter.
Mr Lyes added: “We have long campaigned for national government to recognise the significance of local roads and ring-fence funds over a five-year period to enable councils to plan and deliver longer-term road maintenance. If the coming winter proves to be colder than normal, as some are predicting, we could sadly see our roads crumbling yet further, costing drivers hundreds of thousands of pounds in repairs.
“We’re sounding the alarm now so that this doesn’t happen.
“But we badly need the Transport Secretary and the Treasury to take a fresh look at how local roads are funded.”
The RAC Pothole Index is a long-term measure of the condition of roads which is adjusted for weather and seasonal factors.
It revealed drivers are nearly one-and-a-half times more likely to break down after hitting a pothole today than they were when the RAC first started collecting this data in 2006.
Some 46 per cent of drivers questioned by the RAC believe the state of their local roads is one of their four biggest motoring-related concerns, up from 38 per cent 12 months ago.
More than half of drivers said road conditions where they live have deteriorated over the past year and up from 49 per cent in 2019.