MSE News: Pothole breakdowns jump more than 10% 26 January 2018 at 10:26AM in Motoring 9 replies 1.8K views

Former_MSE_Megan_F

The number of vehicles breaking down after hitting a pothole has jumped dramatically, according to the RAC...

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'Pothole breakdowns jump more than 10%'

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aj23_2

I'm not surprised. They only ever fill them in loosely and 2 weeks late it's even worse and bigger than it was before.

One-Eye

Fact - there has been an 11% increase in breakdowns due to damaged shock absorbers, broken suspension springs or distorted wheels.

Fake News - there has been an 11% increase in breakdowns due to potholes.

How the fact morphed into being totally due to potholes is amazing. Road based reasons include potholes but also poorly designed speed bumps. Reasons down to the driver include hitting curbs, mounting curbs to park on the pavement and excessive speed over speed bumps. Reasons due to the vehicle include the trend for lower profile tyres, the use of shorter springs and dampers to enable a lower bonnet design and possibly the use of springs with unfinished ends (I have doubts over this last one).

System

Very nice but where I live its down to potholes. My wife's car used to need suspension work for every MOT. Every year it would be drop links, even ones replaced the year before or the year before that at the most.. She changed jobs so no longer went down the particular road causing the problem and its never failed on suspension since.

As for wheels, low profile tyres aren't helping matters.

jimjames

How does a broken shock absorber cause a break down? I've never had a broken shock, leaking yet but never to the stage it would cause the car to not run.

Even a spring is unlikely to break at the point of hitting a pothole, it may be weakened so it fails sooner but I find it hard to believe that a queue of cars are broken down next to a pothole as the article appears to claim.

Crabman

MSE should examine how many local authorities have stopped accepting pothole reports from members of the public via smartphones.

Odd, isn't it, given how many of us have a smartphone? Almost as if they prefer to remain in ignorance so they don't have to repair potholes or pay damage as a result of their negligence.

Well, it isn't that simple - if they ignore reports from these apps that are sent to them, the courts consider that the council is still aware even if they choose not to read the emails. So public claims for damage that are fought hard will succeed.

facade

Isn't it more an indication of the poor quality of today's cars that they break immediately you drive over a ripple in the tarmac?

In the Olden Days when you actually had tyres with sidewalls rather than the elastic bands they fit nowadays you could drive over pretty much anything without something breaking.

badmemory

Serious question. When a pothole is over a metre diameter is it still a pothole?

It has already been proved that 20mph limits & road humps don't reduce accidents, so when will they admit that potholes increase them? I'm getting a little bored with driving 2.5miles to the local town using avoidance strategies. Which is the best way to do it? Drive really close to a parked car or drive on the other side of the road?

mgfvvc

facade wrote: »

Isn't it more an indication of the poor quality of today's cars that they break immediately you drive over a ripple in the tarmac?

In the Olden Days when you actually had tyres with sidewalls rather than the elastic bands they fit nowadays you could drive over pretty much anything without something breaking.

I had a number of 1980s cars and thy al had a life expectancy of around 100,000 miles/10 years. My modern cars have a life expectancy of around 200,000 miles/20 years. My current car starts first time every time and has only ever needed unscheduled garage attention for pothole damage and an idiot taking off a wing mirror on a narrow lane.

In terms of reliability I'd take my modern Ford over any of the cars from when I started driving.

You may have a point about wheels and tyres, but I'm more inclined to blame a lack of maintenance on the narrow country lanes around here. The other side of the coin on modern tyres is that I get very few actual punctures on modern tyres. I had a cluster a few years back when my tyres picked up 3 nail punctures in 6 months, but apart from that I don't think I've had any other punctures in the last 15 years.

facade

In The Olden Days the roads were pretty bad, and "car parks" were literally bomb sites, covered in craters. I never once broke a spring from 1978 until 2006 (when I had Vauxhalls), my Renault Nee-San is on the second set that I've fitted, and has only done 40,000 miles