Nearly half of drivers have to avoid potholes every day

According to a recent survey, nearly half of drivers swerve to avoid potholes on a daily basis, pushing the Daily Mail to run a campaign calling for an end to the pothole crisis.

A bumpy road for many

Market research company Consumer Intelligence found that 45% of survey respondents dodge potholes every day.

Two-thirds of drivers said roads had got worse over the last year and only one in 14 believed there had been an improvement.

Just under half of motorists reported damaging their car by hitting a pothole and one in five of these drivers said they had to pay more than £100 for repairs.

It’s not just drivers in England who are suffering from a pothole problem. 80% of drivers in Scotland and 76% in Wales said they now encounter more potholes than a year ago.

Despite potholes causing chaos on many roads, drivers believe that not enough is being done to fix the issue.

Time for action

Nearly three in ten of the 1,079 people polled said they had reported a pothole to a local authority. Of those, 15% said the council carried out repairs within a week, a fifth said it took over a month and 23% said they were still waiting for works to be carried out.

Last month, the Daily Mail called for revenue raised from fuel duty to be ring-fenced for council pothole budgets, and 64% of drivers supported this idea.

While a government spokesman said it’s investing £5billion from 2020 to 2025 to fill millions of potholes a year, Councillor David Renard, from the Local Government Association, pointed out that the government “spent 31 times more per mile maintaining motorways and A roads last year than it did on funding councils to repair crumbling local roads.”

Despite drivers’ hopes for smooth roads, experts warn that we could see an increase in the number of potholes instead. Read more here.