Skip to main content

Pothole pique drives UK man into action

Potholes are the scourge of commuters and the source of hours of complaining around the office water cooler. But some people do more than complain; they take action that gets results, such as happened recently in the United Kingdom.
December 12, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Fertile ground for activists

Potholes are the scourge of commuters and the source of hours of complaining around the office water cooler. But some people do more than complain; they take action that gets results, such as happened recently in the United Kingdom.

He was dubbed the pothole vigilante, a 72-year-old man who decided one morning to fill one particular pothole he called “The Crater” after 17 months of complaining to the council.

That first pothole job took Reg Winsor 15 minutes to repair using a friend's tarmac and tools, according to %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal a report by the BBC Visit BBC Website false http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-30412435 false false%>. 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.

"There is no money to do it, so what we are meant to do, sit on our backsides and do nothing? We are British and most of us Brits want to do something about it," he said.

The BBC reported that Devon County Council has a pothole repair backlog of around US$1.2 billion (£758 million) and it spends $1.57 billion (£1 billion) every year maintaining nearly 13,000km of roads.

In Russia, the news outlet %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal Al Jazeera Watch Youtube Clip here false http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQoeBUKZQBg false false%> reported that 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.

But another Russian man has gone down the smartphone route and developed the pothole app. A person takes a picture of the offending hole and loads it onto a website that names and shames the local authority and leaders.

All three efforts in Russia have made councils move faster on repairs, Al Jazeera reported.

Related Content

  • Scania get tough with Off-Road truck versions
    April 19, 2012
    To address the needs of the off-road market, Scania has added bigger non-slip steps, an additional step for windscreen cleaning and light guards to its off-road range of tractive units and multi wheelers. As an option the chassis can be supplied with factory-fitted PTO hydraulics and tank to power tipper rams or similar.
  • Fan’s Ford Focus finds favour with Flavor Fav
    December 2, 2015
    Pop stars are noted for taking the most outrageous limousines to their gigs. But what should a singing group do if their transport doesn’t show up, leaving them stranded in a strange city? That was the question facing New York’s hip-hop legend Public Enemy when recently in the United Kingdom they found themselves in a record store and their taxi to their gig nowhere to be found. Public Enemy had booked a normal taxi amid their concern that their large tour bus could not navigate the narrow city street
  • Summer is here and so bears, moose and other animals on the road
    July 9, 2015
    Summertime, both north and south of the equator, brings more tourists onto the world’s roads that run through some of the planet’s most beautiful parks and nature reserves.
  • 4x4 Canter is start turn on Mercedes Benz stand
    January 6, 2017
    A 4x4 version of Mitsubishi’s Canter light truck premiered at INTERMAT on the stand of its sister company Mercedes Benz, which distributes the vehicles in Europe. The 6.5tonne GVW vehicle is fitted with a transfer box that diverts half of the torque to the front wheels at the touch of a button and can be engaged while still on the move.