Jonny McCambridge: The road – taking evasive action to avoid potholes, rough repairs and a rattly old motor

Was it to be that I could avoid the hassle and stress of having to book an appointment?

Alas, my sense of elation was to be fleeting as I learnt that the exemption was only for certain cars first registered between 2017 and 2020. My poor old motor was already long past its prime by that era. I have no particular interest in trading it in for a more modern model and will likely continue to drive it until either it or I expire.

Over the years my battered motor has proven to be mostly reliable, but rattly. It gets me where I need to be but with no guarantee of comfort on the way. Sometimes, as I drive along bumpier surfaces, I find myself holding on to parts of the interior in a vain attempt to still the incessant shaking.

One of the many bumps in the road

There is a hilly stretch of road between my house and the local village. I have measured it to be almost one mile long. I drive on that stretch of road most days, and often several times in a day – back and forth to school, to the shops, onwards towards the connecting main roads which link north and south. While I have no way of quantifying it, I suspect I have travelled more often on that little part of road than any other in my life.

A number of months ago I noticed that a large manhole at the side of the road had started to collapse. The subsidence was gradual at first and then quite severe, leaving a deep crater on the tarred surface. I had to manoeuvre my car to avoid the hole each time I drove past, fearing if one of my tyres went down there, it might not come out again.

I knew that the issue had been recorded by officialdom because days after the cavern appeared, someone sprayed white paint on the road around the crumbling area.

Weeks passed before I saw a repair team at the site. There were a number of men and they gathered in a circle around the hole, seemingly staring into it. Later, as I drove in the opposite direction, I saw that the hole remained unfixed but cones had now been placed around it.

It was another couple of weeks before the hole was eventually filled in. I readily confess to being inexpert in this field of work, but my impression was that it was a rough job. Within a few days I saw that the manhole had begun to sink again.

On another day as I was taking my son to school, he observed that it was a very bumpy road. I found this interesting as I always assumed the state of our transport infrastructure not to be high on his list of everyday concerns. I suppose roads are like people; whenever you see them every day you might not notice gradual changes, but over a period of time their condition will deteriorate if not given care.

So, I proposed an experiment to my son. On our school run we would record every imperfection in both directions on that one mile stretch of road. I set a broad testing environment – we would count every part of the surface which caused there to be a shake inside my car.

This included small imperfections which led to minor tremors, larger areas of subsidence, parts of the road which had been dug up and then filled in again with a noticeable difference to the level of the tarmac and, in a small number of cases, bad holes which I make a point of not driving over for fear of damaging my vehicle.

And so, on a school morning, we set off. I pointed out all the flaws on the surface and my son counted them. There were 78 between the point we entered and exited the road. We repeated the experiment in the opposite direction at home time. A further 80 imperfections were counted.

My son suggested that 158 flaws on a one mile stretch of road seemed to be a lot. I cautiously agreed, although noted that the experiment would need to be repeated on a number of similar roads to provide a useful working sample to know if it was above or below average. The truth was that I knew other roads in a worse state that the one I frequent.

Soon after this, I noticed that a new pothole had developed in the centre of the carriageway. The chasm deepened and quickly developed into yet another area that I avoided driving over. Again, white paint was sprayed onto the surface around the hole.

Driving home from school, my son observed that there seemed to be a man dancing in the middle of the road. Closer inspection revealed it to be, to my alarm, a workman filling in the hole while cars drove past him in both directions. He had a large stick with a flat plate on the bottom and was tapping down the new tar repeatedly in an apparent effort to flatten it.

Later that night I went for a walk and curiosity brought me to the area where the road repair had been carried out. Once more acknowledging my limitations of knowledge, I was puzzled by the end result. Rather than the surface being left flat, the new tar was piled higher than the level of the rest of the road in a convex bulge. I wasn’t sure I would be much more satisfied in driving over it now than I had been before.

But the situation continued to evolve. Within days the tar had begun to wear away and flatten out. I suspect that in a few more weeks the hole will again be emptied and what was convex, will again become concave. I still won’t be driving over it.