Something positive we can do to make cycling safer.

[mjr]

You seem desperate to prove a point here.

Not really. I'm just kicking back against the snowflake driver "waaah, evil council hasn't fixed all potholes the instant they appear" argument in a forum where it really shouldn't get much traction.

If you seriously think even the most careful and competent driver has never gone over an unseen pothole then you haven't driven much is only conclusion I can come to.

Either that's disingenuously misdescribing what I've posted or it's still ignoring all the bits when I talk about slowing down to cope with unseen potholes.

Either that or the roads must be in great condition where you drive.

They're really not.

[...] Now you may think I'm just not competent or observant etc but seeing as potholes are the bane of many road users lives be they motorists, cyclists and even horse riders etc then I think if they were that easy to spot and avoid them then how come so many don't. As for reducing speed, yes that's quite easy at less than 40mph speed say but at motorway speeds in heavy traffic not so much.

There's a lot of crap drivers about and there are also some foolish cyclists. I've not really seen horse riders hit potholes enough to comment on those.

Reducing speed from motorway speeds is easy - that's what the middle/left pedal does, try it some time - and even if it's heavy traffic, either you must have sight of over 60m of clear road in front of you or you're not going that fast (or you're driving incompetently, and I doubt that). People mustn't let a driver behind bully them into driving recklessly or carelessly, faster than they can stop within what they can see. Any drivers who would should be weeded out sooner rather than later, and smashing their car on a pothole seems a fairly low-risk way to do that, doesn't it? A silver lining to the poor state of the roads!

I'm not after an argument here but I honestly don't think you are being realistic. I'd also say the issue isn't so much with drivers but fact the roads are so bad that it's unavoidable.

The roads are bad but it's not completely unavoidable. Any time you don't avoid a pothole, be honest: you made a mistake. That's OK. I make mistakes and hit the odd pothole too hard as well. They shouldn't be there, but we all know we don't pay enough taxes for a permanently-roving rapid reaction force of roadmenders, so there are potholes.

What grinds my gears is drivers who drive faster than they can see or drive blind into puddles at full tilt, hit a pothole, and then go all snowflake when it's suggested that it's reasonable of the council to batch road repairs or the driver is in any way responsible for bending their car. I'm not after an argument either, but we drivers should take some farking responsibility if we fail to cope with the roads that motor traffic has ground into dust.

 

[All uphill]

Another cycling thread descends into becoming a motoring thread.

Another thread about improving things becomes a thread for moaning.

 

[winjim]

Another cycling thread descends into becoming a motoring thread.

Another thread about improving things becomes a thread for moaning.

Sorry, I was just surprised by the extent of the problem on the main roads as well as local routes so wanted to acknowledge it was a highways agency issue as well as a local authority one.

 

[Bristolian]

@wimjim - Just for your information. The Highways Agency ceased to exist in March 2015, at least in name anyway. The named changed to Highways England (April 2015 to August 2021) and they are currently called National Highways. Although their responsibilities have generally remained the same the way they do it has changed considerably (e.g. outsourcing virtually everything).

 

[lazybloke]

Roadworks near my house earlier this week. Finished Wednesday, with the surface beautifully restored.

Can't have been a good job: By Thursday, the surface had broken up and there was a massive pothole.

 

[Binky]

Roadworks near my house earlier this week. Finished Wednesday, with the surface beautifully restored.

Can't have been a good job: By Thursday, the surface had broken up and there was a massive pothole.

This is an issue as well. Substandard repair work which after a while makes situation worse.
Get patchwork of repairs on sections of road and it's like a minefield.

 

[All uphill]

This morning, instead of sitting at home moaning, I went for a walk and took a pair of snippers with me.

I walked a couple of miles, removed and disposed of three advertising signs fixed to traffic lights.

Three fewer distractions for road users.

 

[winjim]

outsourcing virtually everything

Why does that not surprise me?

 

[mjr]

Why does that not surprise me?

Because you've outsourced the act of being surprised to some gig economy zero hours workers?

 

[katiewlx]

This is an issue as well. Substandard repair work which after a while makes situation worse.
Get patchwork of repairs on sections of road and it's like a minefield.

they dont seal the fix properly is the main problem. so water gets in, it freezes, especially this time of year, then expands and instantly breaks open the fix again.

councils are supposed to keep a check on the quality of work, but often its only one person in the department, with hundreds of fixes happening per week across a whole county network of roads, and theres no real system for identifying repeat work as such, since nearly every report even if its the exact same hole will be marked up slightly differently each time.

and the outsourced firm dont care because they just get paid for every job they complete, so theres an element of theres no incentive to fix it up properly, not that they deliberately do it badly, imo they just dont have the same skills the people doing the job did even 20 years ago, their attitude is more just fill the hole, thats good enough, move on.

 

[mjr]

and the outsourced firm dont care because they just get paid for every job they complete, so theres an element of theres no incentive to fix it up properly, not that they deliberately do it badly, imo they just dont have the same skills the people doing the job did even 20 years ago, their attitude is more just fill the hole, thats good enough, move on.

I don't think that's true about the contract in all areas. In some, the contractor is paid to maintain the roads to the specified plan, not for each individual repair.

I agree about the skills. The link between hiring or training skilled workers and a more profitable contract seems too weak to make the repair companies invest in skills.

 

[Jenkins]

Another 10 working day repair confirmation to one of my reports from the other week - this one needs doing as it's on the edge of a cycle lane just where you'd be moving out to take the line for a right turn at a roundabout, while the debris being created is filling the lane when going straight on or left.

 

[NorthernSky]

i try and report potholes where possible and i have seen a few repaired after reporting which is always pleasing
i've also reported a couple of road signs and again they were fixed, it took a while but they got there.
i think the councils rely on people reporting these things as they'll never spot everything on their own