IT’S ALL GONE TO POT
Broken suspension, distorted wheels, damaged shock absorbers — UK roads are hard on our vehicles. But manufacturers are fighting back with pothole taming technology
Every day in the life of Britain’s 36 million motorists involves navigating the growing problem of potholes. It’s causing damage to countless cars and putting lives at risk as councils and the Government prioritise other areas ahead of vital road repairs. Motoring groups warn of ‘a plague of potholes’ after the big spring thaw.
Drivers making claims for damage caused by poorly maintained roads are battling with red tape and councils keen to fob them off.
MUSICAL HISTORY
It’s an issue that has grown massively in the nearly 55 years since the Beatles wrote A Day In the Life chronicling the 4,000 holes in Blackburn and speculating they would be enough to fill the Albert Hall.
the inspiration for that classic Lennon and McCartney line came from an article they read in the Daily Mail of tuesday, January 17, 1967, in the Far And Near column, headlined: ‘the holes in our roads’.
It noted: ‘there are 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire, or one twenty-sixth of a hole per person, according to a council survey.
‘If Blackburn is typical, there are two million holes in Britain’s roads and 300,000 in London.’
Now a pothole is filled every 19 seconds across england and Wales, according to the Annual Local Authority road Maintenance (ALArM) survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA).
But the cost of dealing with pothole compensation claims is still £15 million of which £3.6 million is paid out to motorists, the remaining £11.4 million being administrative costs. scottish councils paid out £178,391 in claim between April 2020 and June this year.
And don’t expect improvements anytime soon. the AIA report says:
■ tHe average frequency of road surfacing is now once every 83 years in england, 32 years in London and 46 years in Wales.
■ tHe one-off cost to fix the backlog of maintenance work on local roads in england and Wales is in excess of £10.24 billion, while in scotland it is £3billion.
■ AND it would take ten years to complete even if local authorities had the funding and resources available to do the work.
ALL SYSTEMS GO
But car firms are responding with pothole-busting technology that at least mitigates the worst effects. n ForD’s new Focus is helping limit the impact of damaged roads for drivers with innovative pothole detection technology. the system senses when a wheel is falling into a pothole and adjusts the suspension. the tyre and wheel don’t drop as far, so they don’t strike the opposite side of the pothole as harshly.
A signal from the front wheel also gives a pre-warning to the rear wheel before it, too, reaches the pothole. n upMArket French car-maker Ds Automobiles — a sibling of peugeot and Citroen — uses a system called Active scan suspension to spot and react to potholes.
It uses a camera located at the top of the windscreen, four sensors and three accelerometers (measuring changes in acceleration) to instantly adjust each of the wheels to make the suspension firmer or softer depending on road conditions.
It is available either as standard or as an option on the Ds 4 (standard from £36,600), the Ds 7 Crossback (from £39,220), and Ds 9 (from £44,705). n MerCeDes-Benz was early to the ‘pothole plague’ with its previous generation s-Class