Injury after hitting pothole

[screenman]

I do not think there was a way without getting behind, we never had the manpower nor the money. Do not get me wrong I would love super smooth roads, however I am also a realist.

 

[Dragonwight]

Not all of them, but this thread did prompt me to report a real biggie I saw yesterday. Looking on the Fillthathole website I think it's been reported before. Which is kind of interesting.

I have used Fillthathole as well and my local council didnt fill in a single hole that I reported using it. When I used the council website direct the holes were all filled in within 5 working days which i was fairly impressed by although you can be sure looking at the standard of repair that they will reappear in 6 months.

 

[I like Skol]

I don’t want to be blamed of ‘blaming’ the OP but this thread is bugging me due to the inconsistencies it contains

The one I hit was on a regular route and partially hidden........

So the OP regularly rode this route and the hole was only partially hidden!!! Does this mean that despite having prior knowledge of the roads condition and the hole being partially visible to a road user who took the care to travel at an appropriate speed and with due diligence, the OP still rode into it inflicting his injuries in the process?

Hands on hearts guys,who has reported the 100+ pot holes they rode past this week. Hmmm! thought not.

I wondered about this point before you brought it up. If the OP uses the route regularly as stated, did it never occur to him that such a hole might be a danger to someone and should perhaps be reported?

I'm pretty shocked by some of the blame-the-victim posts in this thread!

Nobody in their right mind would argue that it was okay for a council building to have a missing tread on a staircase, and that if somebody tripped and broke their neck, then tough - they should look where they were going, but that is the argument being used about potholes.

Colin, this is a spurious argument. Would you reasonably expect the stairs in a public building (or any other for that matter) to have a missing tread? Would it be reasonable to expect a minor country road with a known poor surface to have bad potholes at the end of winter and after rain and bad weather? The two cases do not merit comparison.

I don’t think anyone on this forum is blaming the OP and we all accept his injuries are horrific and unfortunate but, in all honesty, he has had an ‘accident’ or made a misjudgement (call it what you will) and I don’t think morally he has the right to try and lay the blame at the councils or highways agency door.

......to be honest if the damage to my teeth and face wasn't so extensive I may have chalked it up to experience. However, I .......do not expect to suffer severe injuries and significant costs in dental repair due to shoddy road upkeep.

The severity of the injuries or the financial loss suffered is irrelevant! Either you believe it is someone else’s fault and you will pursue them regardless or you accept it was your own personal mistake and take it on the chin, which is it? The statement I quote here stinks of greed and the blame and claim culture, it suggests that maybe you have cocked up in a big way and now you are fishing around for someone else to pick up your bill! Even if you had ridden through the hole and emerged out of the other side unscathed do you not think that you still had a duty to inform the council and make sure the defect was being dealt with?

 

[jowwy]

the reason i stand by my comments are for this reason

i myself sustained injury when going over a bridge recently that was metal gridded and filled with chippings, over the winter the rain, ice and snow had removed the chippings and left the metal grid. on the morning i crashed it had been raining, the grid was wet and slippery and i lost the back end of the bike, hit the bridge pillar, smashed my gears, ripped my leggings, sustained large amounts of road rash down my legs............but i could see the metal grid and i could see that it was wet, so who is to blame???........the council for not laying more chippings over the bridge or me for riding over that bridge, not at an excessive speed and losing control...

from the pictures posted by the OP, he could see the puddles, he could see the potholes, but he still managed to hit one..............the route is his regular route, i'm guessing he has seen that pothole on more than one occassion in the past, has he ever reported it, has he reported any of the potholes that he said he was avoiding...........

case closed

 

[dellzeqq]

Why did you ride into a pothole, what happened to make you fall off? Have you ridden that road before? was you not aware that there might have been potholes and adjusted your riding style accordingly, do you think the hole could possibly been avoided, where you wearing a helmet. This is just a few of the questions you may be asked to answer.

I wish you good speed with your recovery and hope that it has not put you off cycling.

Would I claim, no way I would have accepted it as an accident that I contributed towards. When every body starts paying considerable more tax and the weather stops changing we may then have silky smooth roads, up till that time accept the conditions and ride to suit.

this is the first of many such posts that entirely miss the point of the thread. The OP asked a question. The answer came in the next post.

Contact solicitor asap. - russel jones and walker, the CTC linked firm, gave me very good service

Also, go back to the scene asap and photograph the pothole with something in shot to give it scale. Plus knock the doors of close-by houses and ask if they know how long the pothole has been there. Check the CTC pothole reporting site also.

The rest is fluff.

 

[totallyfixed]

The rest is fluff.

Outrageous statement,......................fluff drives CC.

 

[dellzeqq]

to be fair, other people agreed with PK99. But, yes, while the fluff can be fun, it's all a bit beside the point

 

[ColinJ]

As for the argument about the cost of doing repairs ... I have seen the same holes bodge-repaired many times over and the repairs only last a few weeks. The council then adopts the same penny-pinching attitude next time and does shabby repairs again. Each time, the cost of a single repair is less than doing it right, so it looks as though the council is being frugal, but it is a false economy - 10 half price repairs cost 5 times as much as one full-price one!

The hazardous pothole that I reported was repaired properly - probably because I made such a fuss about it. The man who repaired it emailed me a photograph of the repair to confirm that it had been done and to make sure it was the one that I had complained about. That repair is still going strong over 10 years later because it was done properly and that is despite it being in a vulnerable position on a busy A-road.

Councils are not saving tax payers' money long-term by neglecting roads, they are actually only showing very short-term savings. The only way not looking after roads would save money is if they were never repaired again!

 

[screenman]

How long would it take to fill them all?

ColinJ I live in Lincolnshire believe me I know where you are coming from when talking about bodging, unfortunatley there are very few guys doing thousands of miles of roads.

 

[Boris Bajic]

How long would it take to fill them all?

quote]

I've worked it out using my O-Level maths:

If three men have four cubic metres of asphalt and seven cubic metres of three-quarter-down hardcore and if each man works for seventeen minutes out of every hour of an eight-hour day, allowing for tea breaks and transport to and from the job.... And if the cost of filling each hole can be calculated using the formula... And if only fish weighing less than 400 grammes are selected by the buyer....

Bollocks!! I've forgotten my O-Level maths.

Sorry.

 

[Alun]

As for the argument about the cost of doing repairs ... I have seen the same holes bodge-repaired many times over and the repairs only last a few weeks. The council then adopts the same penny-pinching attitude next time and does shabby repairs again. Each time, the cost of a single repair is less than doing it right, so it looks as though the council is being frugal, but it is a false economy - 10 half price repairs cost 5 times as much as one full-price one!

The hazardous pothole that I reported was repaired properly - probably because I made such a fuss about it. The man who repaired it emailed me a photograph of the repair to confirm that it had been done and to make sure it was the one that I had complained about. That repair is still going strong over 10 years later because it was done properly and that is despite it being in a vulnerable position on a busy A-road.

Councils are not saving tax payers' money long-term by neglecting roads, they are actually only showing very short-term savings. The only way not looking after roads would save money is if they were never repaired again!

What was the road surface like outside the Dalesman Cafe on the SITD? I initially thought that the surface had been removed ready for replacement, but it wasn't smooth enough for that.

My LA has plenty of tarmac for speedbumps, which sometimes they have to remove again because they've placed them on the apex of a bend.

Didn't the Beatles write a song about potholes, in Blackburn, Lancashire if I'm not mistaken?

 

[ColinJ]

How long would it take to fill them all?

ColinJ I live in Lincolnshire believe me I know where you are coming from when talking about bodging, unfortunatley there are very few guys doing thousands of miles of roads.

Perhaps if the government decided to give the new money that they have recently been conjuring up, to councils to spend on infrastructure improvements, instead of to banks to award to their own staff as bonuses, many thousands of unemployed labourers could be taken off benefits, become taxpayers again, set about sorting this mess out and we could get to ride around on First World roads rather than what are rapidly becoming Third World dirt tracks!

 

[ColinJ]

What was the road surface like outside the Dalesman Cafe on the SITD? I initially thought that the surface had been removed ready for replacement, but it wasn't smooth enough for that.

Yes - that was a classic example, wasn't it - we couldn't believe how bad that stretch of road was! I don't know if potsy took any pictures of it? I would have done if I'd had my camera with me.

Didn't the Beatles write a song about potholes, in Blackburn, Lancashire if I'm not mistaken?

It was part of A Day In The Life from the Sgt. Peppers album (3 min 25 sec into the recording below).

 

[ColinJ]

Careful there, someone will be along to suggest that unemployed school leavers could do it in return for benefits.

Or we could just think of a hip new name for the concept - 'jobs' perhaps!

 

[Gary E]

Or we could just think of a hip new name for the concept - 'jobs' perhaps!

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