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A Minging Manc...
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Injury after hitting pothole
- Thread starter ushills
- Start date
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For a minute, I really believed the previous post about being nice.....just for a minute though.
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
Nice like the distinction between precise and accurate?I am being nice. But it's a particular kind of nice.
Boris Bajic
Guest
My commiserations and sympathy for the OP were unqualified. No niceties; no faux compliments. The discussion went on from there. It's a cycling forum.
I am (as you imply) a colossal and pompous arse and have been reminded regularly of this for many years by those who love me.
I'm not sure why you posted fairly mean-spirited invective on this forum against my anecdotal style of writing. I really am a soft target and there must be more challenging things for you to get your teeth into. And I really am too old to offer much more than anecdotes.
My guesses about your approximate age and chosen path in life went unanswered. Is that because I was right? If I was right, is that what is making you cross? If I was and if it is, I wish you better luck in times to come.
I am happy with being an arse and have had decades to get used to it.
If it turns out that you're one too (I have no idea whether you are) then just enjoy it and live with it. If you're not, all the better.
I have rarely known you to be right about anything, and let's just say you're running true to form.
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
I'm pretty shocked by some of the blame-the-victim posts in this thread!
No sensible person likes the 'I stubbed my toe on a crack in the pavement so I'm calling InjuryLawyers4U' attitude***, but saying that potholes are a hazard which we should put up with, and by implication that councils are free to ignore, is just plain wrong!
Damaged roads are going to have to be fixed one day or the entire road system will eventually fall apart. If councils ignore potholes now because they say they can't afford to fix them, then they not only will end up having to pay compensation to victims of accidents, but they will also have much bigger repair bills in the future.
If councils took some of the council tax and housing benefit claimants off the dole and paid them to fix those roads then they'd be receiving more council tax and be saving a lot of money that they currently pay out for broken teeth, broken necks and broken vehicles!
I didn't think it was possible for a council to make Calderdale council's inadequate road maintenance efforts look good, but the council in Coventry succeeded! The road surfaces there make Calderdale's look like billiard tables.
On one family visit I went out for a ride on my bike in Coventry, and yes - I could see that the roads were awful. I'd spotted that 5 inch deep pothole in front of me. I was skirting round the 3 inch pothole to the side of that. I was riding slowly and I had my wits about me.
But then a white van came hurtling round a bend halfway across my side of the road. I had nowhere to go but into the puddle at the side of the road which I had suspected might contain a pothole. It did. A f'kin' great big, front-wheel swallowing hole which stopped my bike dead! I nearly endoed, but used my right knee on the bars and my nuts on the stem as brakes. It hurt!
I was absolutely livid, both with WVM for driving like a complete pillock, and with the council's neglect of the roads. No - I didn't take them to court ... what would I say - "My balls hurt!" - but I tell you one thing - if I'd ripped my nuts off, then I'd have sued them for every penny I could get! If that meant dave r's council tax going up slightly, then sorry dave - perhaps it would make the buggers look after the roads properly!
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.
***I was in a friend's car once when he was involved in a low-speed multiple pile-up. He told me later that he had a stiff neck so he was going to claim for a whiplash injury. I wasn't impressed and told him so. I also refused to claim for my non-existent injury, though he wanted me to because it would have supported his claim that we'd been hit rather hard.
No sensible person likes the 'I stubbed my toe on a crack in the pavement so I'm calling InjuryLawyers4U' attitude***, but saying that potholes are a hazard which we should put up with, and by implication that councils are free to ignore, is just plain wrong!
Damaged roads are going to have to be fixed one day or the entire road system will eventually fall apart. If councils ignore potholes now because they say they can't afford to fix them, then they not only will end up having to pay compensation to victims of accidents, but they will also have much bigger repair bills in the future.
If councils took some of the council tax and housing benefit claimants off the dole and paid them to fix those roads then they'd be receiving more council tax and be saving a lot of money that they currently pay out for broken teeth, broken necks and broken vehicles!
I didn't think it was possible for a council to make Calderdale council's inadequate road maintenance efforts look good, but the council in Coventry succeeded! The road surfaces there make Calderdale's look like billiard tables.
On one family visit I went out for a ride on my bike in Coventry, and yes - I could see that the roads were awful. I'd spotted that 5 inch deep pothole in front of me. I was skirting round the 3 inch pothole to the side of that. I was riding slowly and I had my wits about me.
But then a white van came hurtling round a bend halfway across my side of the road. I had nowhere to go but into the puddle at the side of the road which I had suspected might contain a pothole. It did. A f'kin' great big, front-wheel swallowing hole which stopped my bike dead! I nearly endoed, but used my right knee on the bars and my nuts on the stem as brakes. It hurt!
I was absolutely livid, both with WVM for driving like a complete pillock, and with the council's neglect of the roads. No - I didn't take them to court ... what would I say - "My balls hurt!" - but I tell you one thing - if I'd ripped my nuts off, then I'd have sued them for every penny I could get! If that meant dave r's council tax going up slightly, then sorry dave - perhaps it would make the buggers look after the roads properly!
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.
***I was in a friend's car once when he was involved in a low-speed multiple pile-up. He told me later that he had a stiff neck so he was going to claim for a whiplash injury. I wasn't impressed and told him so. I also refused to claim for my non-existent injury, though he wanted me to because it would have supported his claim that we'd been hit rather hard.
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
He should have watched where he was going!!
If road maintenance was done properly; none.
Boris Bajic
Guest
I may be part of what you see as that. It's not a case of blaming the road user or victim (a word I wouldn't use in this context). It's a case of not blaming the local authority. I don't see why there has to be any blame here.
Your point (not quoted in full) is extremely well argued. Many, many people are of your mind on this. I disagree with you, as do a few others. That doesn't mean I blame the road user.
I don't point a finger of blame at the road user who suffers injury and whose vehicle needs expensive repairs. That is not a nice place to be, as I've found out to my own cost more than once. It is most unpleasant to lie bleeding and bruised next to scattered lamp and bike parts because a deep hole was obscured by water.
I don't live in some freshly-tarmacced Utopia. I still have to look out for potholes. I pay an enormous amount of Council Tax and on the whole I think it is well spent. All organisations slip up here and there. I tend towards cutting them some slack.
That doesn't mean I blame the victim. I may speak for others who appear to fall into that category.
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