I landed in hole load of trouble (From Bucks Free Press)

I landed in hole load of trouble

10:22am Friday 29th January 2010

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I’M not sure whether another voice crying in the wilderness of potholes is going to achieve anything to improve the parlous state of our roads, which were bad enough before the ‘big freeze’ and are now approaching the level of disrepair associated with what we are pleased to call ‘third world countries’ for no logical reason.

I now completely avoid Cressex Road and take a detour to avoid the succession of suspension wrecking craters. But the one that got me and dented my wheel sufficiently badly to break its seal with my tyre was along the B482 from Stokenchurch, just before it reaches Lane End. There is a trench there that neatly captured the nearside tyre of this unwary motorist and ejected it with both the inner and outer rims of my wheel bent backwards.

One would be tempted to think that whoever is in charge of dealing with these potholes had shares in a tyre company, such is the lack of any warning or protection for the motorist.

We can accept that it is probably asking too much that all the yawning craters should be fixed as swiftly as we might like. But, there is a yellow arrow in front of my nemesis, designed presumably to inform the repair crew that this is indeed the one they need to fill in, although if they don’t spot that for themselves they’ll need to change the tyre on the vehicle that brings them there.

Whoever painted that yellow arrow could equally well have surrounded the chasm with some cones to alert the vehicular lemmings that are going to be caught in its gaping maw until it is repaired.

When I took my car to get the wheel and tyre fixed, the mechanic asked me which of the many Wycombe potholes had caused the damage. I started to tell him and he interrupted me “Oh I know the one, I had to fix my sister’s car a couple of days ago because she got caught by that one.”

I think if, as may well happen, someone’s suspension gets banjaxed by the Lane End open cast mine on Finings Road, I would advise them to check up on the law on ‘nonfeasance’ whereby, as I recall, failure to repair (say) uneven flagstones within a reasonable time after having been notified of same renders a council liable in damages if someone injures themselves as a result of that failure.

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