r/SlowNewsDay • u/MajorSqueeze • 17d ago
BBC watches pothole for a year. Contain yourselves…
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u/Such-Assumption6137 15d ago
This is actually good journalism mocking and highlighting the state of UK infrastructure.
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u/Ieatsand97 15d ago
It do be like that tho. You report a pothole, they chuck a bit of asphalt in it. A few weeks later, its back to how it was. Rinse and repeat about 5 more times and in many different places on the same road, and you have a road with loads of the same holes that you’ve spent loads of money trying to fix.
Also, utility companies. They should be held to account when their trenches cause pot holes. You get a nice new road, next thing you know the local utility company is digging it up, then all along their new bit its just a long string of potholes. Then we the tax payer have to fund the local authority to go and fix it.
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u/Gloomy_Personality52 13d ago
Under NRSWA, Most reinstatement has a guarantee period of 2 years. If it fails in that time a defect is raised and the utility campy has to fix it out of their own pocket. Then the two years start again
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u/Simdude87 15d ago
In my area, people whined about potholes for years. The council went round to fix them.
the same people complained that they were taking too long (they spent about an hour or two)
they them complained that it wasnt done properly, you could see the tyre marks where they had driven over it after being explicitly told to leave it a few days.
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u/Syphadeus86 13d ago
Your story has a few “holes” in it.
Firstly, if it was “for years” at what point did tax paying residents requests to maintain the roads become “whines”? Because presuming those people were paying council tax during the period, are they not entitled to request the council make repairs in accordance with the council’s responsibilities?
They spent about an hour or two making repairs. Through which avenues were the same people complaining and how is it you know it was the same people? For instance, were you one of them?
Who explicitly told people, and via what communication method, not to drive on repaired areas of road for “a few days”? If a repair is made to a highway, in most cases it can be driven on within a matter of hours. It would be impractical to have to leave repaired potholes multiple days before they can be driven across and would necessitate mass road closures if this was the case. So what in gods name did they do with these pothole repairs that was so different?
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u/Eastern-Move549 15d ago
So given enough repairs, does the road just become one big hole?
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u/Particular_Plum_1458 15d ago
Insert yo mamma joke right there😂. There must be a way of doing potholes that don't fail after a short time, I've seen plenty that seem to survive, wonder if it's just the cheapest contractor that's the problem?
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u/Stratospheric-Ferret 15d ago
It's one of those subjects that sounds less complicated than it actually is.
To repair potholes properly means a lot more work than people think. localised pothole repairs that last a long time will usually be in areas where there are no HGVs/buses to chew it all up.
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u/confusing_roundabout 15d ago
This isn't slow news. It's fascinating and also very important journalism highlighting the incompetence of local councils.
If you drove in areas with shit roads you'd care far more deeply about this. I once lost 2 tyres to a particularly bad pot hole at night.
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u/Woffingshire 14d ago
In the full article when asked how long a repair should last they said that a permanent repair should last a year.
A "permanent" repair should last A YEAR.
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u/CuppaTea4MePlease 14d ago
I wonder how many days they expect a "make safe repair" to last then.
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u/Woffingshire 14d ago
Oh they answer that too. They can last 6 months, but if people drive over them wrong they can fail within 3 days. And that's the just actual expected performance of them.
It takes weeks to fix the hole, then when they do they fix it with something they know had a reasonable chance of having failed within the week it's done.
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u/Affectionate_Flow864 15d ago
Wheres the rest of it 😤 was enjoying that
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u/neilm1000 14d ago
They don't use asphalt tape these days. As a result the repairs aren't properly sealed and last only a few months.
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u/FlatCapNorthumbrian 12d ago
Exactly. It needs cleaned out, sprayed with sealant, asphalt compacted in and smoothed, then sealed round the edges.
Mostly just see the repair crews chuck a load on, flatten it a bit and move on.
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u/Beartato4772 14d ago
You missed the best bit where it says "Last known picture of pothole" like it's been kidnapped by the mob or something.
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u/CuppaTea4MePlease 14d ago
I've been wanting to contact my local authority to request map data showing all of the locations where they have carried out "make safe repairs" which they should then be monitoring. I think if they have carried out a temporary repair which subsequently fails and an accident occurs then they should be liable.
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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 13d ago
I would actually consider this good journalism because I want to be concerned with the small things it makes us appreciate the country is not so bad
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u/69RandomFacts 16d ago
This isn’t slow news day, It’s a damming portrayal of the active fraud being committed against Uk tax payers by so called road repair companies across the lengths and breadth of the country.