Skip to main content

Pothole plan

Potholes are the scourge of commuters and the source of hours of complaining around the office water cooler. In the UK one pothole vigilante, a 72-year-old man, decided one morning to fill one particular pothole after 17 months of complaining to the council. That first pothole job took the man 15 minutes to repair using a friend's tarmac and tools. He reportedly said the hole was so big that a handrail should be put around it to stop people falling into it. He went on to fill 50 more potholes and the counci
February 24, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Potholes are the scourge of commuters and the source of hours of complaining around the office water cooler. In the UK one pothole vigilante, a 72-year-old man, decided one morning to fill one particular pothole after 17 months of complaining to the council. That first pothole job took the man 15 minutes to repair using a friend's tarmac and tools. He reportedly said the hole was so big that a handrail should be put around it to stop people falling into it. He went on to fill 50 more potholes and the council eventually offered him some training and a job.

Meanwhile in Russia, angry commuters decided to embarrass their local officials into action. Some have been planting potatoes in potholes to see if the spuds will grow quicker than the time it takes the local authority to send out a repair team. In another city, activists are naming and shaming local politicians by painting facial caricatures of the mayor and council members around the hole with the hole as the face’s mouth.

Related Content

  • The UK's massive road repair budget
    November 17, 2023
    The UK has announced a massive road repair budget.
  • Highway 99 revisited
    March 6, 2024
    David Arminas recently returned to Seattle for an inside look at some of the features of the now-complete SR99 tunnel that was a World Highways key project report in November 2017.
  • Demolition starts for Gerald Desmond Bridge
    July 14, 2022
    The 125m-long span will be dismantled, cut and lowered onto a barge in the waters around the Port of Long Beach in the US state of California.
  • Safer roads needed for the gig economy
    May 14, 2019
    Roads everywhere are becoming high-pressure workplaces for millions of gig economy workers, meaning traffic police need a new way to regulate how highways are used. Geoff Hadwick reports from Manchester, UK The way in which the world’s highways are designed, built and used needs to change fast as the gig economy becomes a global phenomenon. Millions of low-paid and badly-trained freelance drivers are now using road as their workplace, all of them working hard under huge amounts of pressure. The tren