State of the roads
Discussion
Re pothole claims, the following is how the process works in one Scottish council. I would imagine others are similar.
It is actually very easy for the council to defend pothole claims as I have recently discovered. Claims are taken by the council and then passed onto their insurer who are the ones who actually decide if a claim is paid - not the council. The councils all have a document that outlines how regularly they will inspect each road (usually based on a hierarchy). In essence, as long as this is followed the insurer will not pay up. Where a defect (pothole) has been reported the council policy will stipulate how quickly this will be inspected (could be within 48 hours or 7 days) and as long as this is done and the defects are repaired as per the councils policy then the claim will be defended. Successful claims are usually down to inspections having been missed. But yes, the council does write it's own policy on how it must handle defects.
As I said this is just one council but I believe others are similar. So claiming can be harder than people think.
It is actually very easy for the council to defend pothole claims as I have recently discovered. Claims are taken by the council and then passed onto their insurer who are the ones who actually decide if a claim is paid - not the council. The councils all have a document that outlines how regularly they will inspect each road (usually based on a hierarchy). In essence, as long as this is followed the insurer will not pay up. Where a defect (pothole) has been reported the council policy will stipulate how quickly this will be inspected (could be within 48 hours or 7 days) and as long as this is done and the defects are repaired as per the councils policy then the claim will be defended. Successful claims are usually down to inspections having been missed. But yes, the council does write it's own policy on how it must handle defects.
As I said this is just one council but I believe others are similar. So claiming can be harder than people think.
Dr_Rick said:
jshell said:
Same in town. I'm waiting to hear back from Edinburgh Council on my claim for a Mini tyre and tracking alignment after hitting a crater at Maybury Casino.
Have they fixed that one yet? I swear I can't see the bottom of it.I hit a particularly bad pot hole on my way home from work last week and prayed that my car still ran straight and I had no punctures. M Sport suspension and 40 profile tyres do not mix well - it even made my glove box pop open!
Upon washing my car at the weekend I noticed that the wheel I hit in the pot hole as a small bulge on the outside of the tyre. The tyre is good with plenty of tread. Would you look at replacing?
Upon washing my car at the weekend I noticed that the wheel I hit in the pot hole as a small bulge on the outside of the tyre. The tyre is good with plenty of tread. Would you look at replacing?
Twenty or so cars affected a few days ago by a large pothole on the main A90 between Aberdeen & Dundee...By the time I passed in the outside lane, most of the cars had been recovered
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen...
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen...
What are the legal / insurance implications if for example, you were to hit a pot hole which lead to a loss of control be it through mechanical failure or simply the sheer impact... and if there was damage done to a third party, where would you stand legally? I ask as yet again I hit a pothole on the M90 recently and the car took a lurch left, I ruined another set of underpants and wondered what would have happened had I lost control and taken out an innocent by stander?
alangla said:
I'm as critical of the roads authorities as the next person, but the recent daily freeze/thaw cycles have really opened up a lot of cracks/potholes in even fairly major roads - there's even fairly big potholes in the M8 surface in the city centre that haven't been fixed.
To be fair to the trunk road operators, there's been various items appearing on Traffic Scotland's website/twitter feed about short-term emergency daytime roadworks on the motorways - presumably this is severe potholes being fixed with traffic still running.
In saying all that, I reported a badly cracked surface on the M80 a couple of years ago, it got passed about between Traffic Scotland, Amey, Bear and Scotland Transerv, all saying it was someone else's area (I'd sent them a Google streetview picture/map of the exact spot!) until I finally got a response from one of them saying it was theirs and it was booked for resurfacing.
Is it not a sad state of affairs that firstly you even have to report such issues and even more importantly that you need to follow up on them. To be fair to the trunk road operators, there's been various items appearing on Traffic Scotland's website/twitter feed about short-term emergency daytime roadworks on the motorways - presumably this is severe potholes being fixed with traffic still running.
In saying all that, I reported a badly cracked surface on the M80 a couple of years ago, it got passed about between Traffic Scotland, Amey, Bear and Scotland Transerv, all saying it was someone else's area (I'd sent them a Google streetview picture/map of the exact spot!) until I finally got a response from one of them saying it was theirs and it was booked for resurfacing.
We pay taxes for a reason.
I for one don't fall for all this crap about having a harsh winter, it was hardly a poor summers day as far as I am concerned. We have stretches of motorway that have not been touched in over 15 years and dont have a single pothole on them and we have crap that was built 5-10 years ago and huge stretches of it need repairs and fall apart at 3 days of subzero temps.
Who are the idiots that get these contractors in? Who verifies what materials they are using and how they are laying it down.
If no one is able to do this why does the council not have it built into contracts that any potholes, repairs required for 5 years should be covered by the original company who fixed/put the roads in initially.
Its just unacceptable. Its corruption through and through
XMT said:
Is it not a sad state of affairs that firstly you even have to report such issues and even more importantly that you need to follow up on them.
We pay taxes for a reason.
I for one don't fall for all this crap about having a harsh winter, it was hardly a poor summers day as far as I am concerned. We have stretches of motorway that have not been touched in over 15 years and dont have a single pothole on them and we have crap that was built 5-10 years ago and huge stretches of it need repairs and fall apart at 3 days of subzero temps.
Who are the idiots that get these contractors in? Who verifies what materials they are using and how they are laying it down.
If no one is able to do this why does the council not have it built into contracts that any potholes, repairs required for 5 years should be covered by the original company who fixed/put the roads in initially.
Its just unacceptable. Its corruption through and through
I assume you mean it is a sad state of affairs that you have to report such issues? In which case... I live in a fairly small city and in it the council has over 600 miles of roads it is responsible for. If you don't think people should have to report issues then you clearly think your taxes should be paid to inspect roads daily (many potholes appear within a day). So, how much more tax do you think you'd pay to get a service like that? As an example it takes a team of 6 inspectors around 6 months, roughly, to properly inspect 600 miles of road. They do look at more than just pot holes, but regardless.We pay taxes for a reason.
I for one don't fall for all this crap about having a harsh winter, it was hardly a poor summers day as far as I am concerned. We have stretches of motorway that have not been touched in over 15 years and dont have a single pothole on them and we have crap that was built 5-10 years ago and huge stretches of it need repairs and fall apart at 3 days of subzero temps.
Who are the idiots that get these contractors in? Who verifies what materials they are using and how they are laying it down.
If no one is able to do this why does the council not have it built into contracts that any potholes, repairs required for 5 years should be covered by the original company who fixed/put the roads in initially.
Its just unacceptable. Its corruption through and through
Unfortunately the 'crap' about the harsh winter isn't. The problem is people think a harsh winter is one with 6 foot of snow. Which, to be fair, would be, however what causes roads to pothole is the subsurface fluctuating just above and below freezing. This year they have been doing this a lot more than previous winters. Not speculation, there are thermometers buried in various places to monitor this. So the crap is actually accurate. The conditions have been perfect for blowing the roads.
Some roads are laid by councils, others 3rd party. Some 3rd party contracts do include responsibility for pothole repairs etc for a number of years. Different road types are laid to different standards for various reasons including how well used they are, what they are used etc. Some more durable surfaces are not economical to use on all roads. I.e. it is cheaper to surface some roads more often than use a more expensive road construction. Many roads issues come from sections dug up by utilities companies - there should definitely be more stringent checks on this work by authorities.
Corruption, not so much. Bit daily fail that.
There are many things the councils and roads authorities do wrong, but I'm not sure you've picked the best selection there, although I do understand a number of the assumptions.
Complete lack of budget allocation is the problem, plain and simple.
This year 17/18, Edinburgh council allocated £6 million for road repairs, next year they've said they'll allocate an extra £1mil to fix the problem.
Back in 2014 though this came out:
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/transp...
£260 million needed to fix just Edinburghs roads. Realistically, we could probably round that up to at the very least £300mil, that's £10mil defecit a year which, anecdotally, would seem reasonable given the state of the roads.
What exactly is £7million going to solve in a £300 million problem? Plenty of money for new trams though that nobody wants...that'll be another few hundred million thrown to constructions firms councillors probably have connections to. Oh and involve ripping up and rebuilding Leith Walk for the 5th time in 10 years.
I reported an emergency pothole today. 1.5 lane wide channel, 6 inches thick, so deep the pipework in the road was exposed with 4 or 5 first sized lumps of tarmac all over the road. The councils repair? Pick up the rocks of tarmac, shove them in the hole and pop a bit of sand in there.
It's not lack of money, man power, ability or resources. It's a complete lack of desire or care from the council. They had a choice this year, fix Edinburgh so it doesn't look like an utter s
t hole or build a tram nobody asked for (94% satisfactiom survey with the current public transport is pretty unanimous). We got a tram. That's the problem.
Winters happen, roads get worn and used. A complete lack of maintenance for years with a budget 10s of millions behind requirement can only ever result in one thing though, a complete state of disrepair.
Take the Edinburgh problem and just extrapolate it across the country which creates a total bill to just repair what we have of £1.67 billion. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/impossible-...
This year 17/18, Edinburgh council allocated £6 million for road repairs, next year they've said they'll allocate an extra £1mil to fix the problem.
Back in 2014 though this came out:
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/transp...
£260 million needed to fix just Edinburghs roads. Realistically, we could probably round that up to at the very least £300mil, that's £10mil defecit a year which, anecdotally, would seem reasonable given the state of the roads.
What exactly is £7million going to solve in a £300 million problem? Plenty of money for new trams though that nobody wants...that'll be another few hundred million thrown to constructions firms councillors probably have connections to. Oh and involve ripping up and rebuilding Leith Walk for the 5th time in 10 years.
I reported an emergency pothole today. 1.5 lane wide channel, 6 inches thick, so deep the pipework in the road was exposed with 4 or 5 first sized lumps of tarmac all over the road. The councils repair? Pick up the rocks of tarmac, shove them in the hole and pop a bit of sand in there.
It's not lack of money, man power, ability or resources. It's a complete lack of desire or care from the council. They had a choice this year, fix Edinburgh so it doesn't look like an utter s
t hole or build a tram nobody asked for (94% satisfactiom survey with the current public transport is pretty unanimous). We got a tram. That's the problem. Winters happen, roads get worn and used. A complete lack of maintenance for years with a budget 10s of millions behind requirement can only ever result in one thing though, a complete state of disrepair.
Take the Edinburgh problem and just extrapolate it across the country which creates a total bill to just repair what we have of £1.67 billion. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/impossible-...
GetCarter said:
I've never seen it so bad in the NW Highlands. This is the main (and only) 'A' road here - on the NC500. Took the pic this morning to send to Highland Council. These are about 6" deep
Local garage is getting 50 punctures a week, and plenty of bent alloys!
Where exactly is this picture from ? We are heading up there and would like to have an idea of where to watch out.Local garage is getting 50 punctures a week, and plenty of bent alloys!
Thanks
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