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

  • Algeria signs off two contracts of Hauts Plateaux motorway work
    January 5, 2015
    The Algerian Council of Ministers has approved two contracts for stretches of road on the Hauts Plateaux motorway. No details of the contractors were given for the work that is to link Lambidiri to Draa Lahmar via Ouled Fadhel. Construction is expected to take 18 months. Last March, World Highways reported that work on the 1,000km Hauts-Plateaux motorway project was to begin that month. Construction cost for motorway’s 10 sections was estimated to be around US$8.94 billion, according to Algerian Minis
  • VIDEO: Foran Equipment helps Kananaskis kayakers construct course
    April 27, 2016
    In the Canadian Rocky Mountains, there was a window of opportunity of only several days before these excavators had to be out of the Kananaskis River ahead of nearby Barrier Dam releasing its water. The provincial Alberta Whitewater Association hired local contractor Foran Equipment to bring in their equipment in to re-work the riverbed after severe flooding in June 2013 washed out the kayaking courses. Southern parts of Alberta province suffered severe storms and massive flooding that month which devastate
  • Matest Asphalt Splitter will make life easier for lab technicians
    January 6, 2017
    Materials testing firm Matest has launched an asphalt splitter at bauma. The machine breaks up asphalt specimens so that the constituent parts can be tested, a task that is often carried out by hand. “The purpose of the machine is to make the operator’s life easier,” said area manager Massiono Martorini. The splitter should also lead to greater efficiency, as breaking specimens down will take less time, and allow laboratory technicians to do other things. Matest expects to sell the splitter to laboratories
  • Matest Asphalt Splitter will make life easier for lab technicians
    April 19, 2013
    Materials testing firm Matest has launched an asphalt splitter at bauma. The machine breaks up asphalt specimens so that the constituent parts can be tested, a task that is often carried out by hand. “The purpose of the machine is to make the operator’s life easier,” said area manager Massiono Martorini. The splitter should also lead to greater efficiency, as breaking specimens down will take less time, and allow laboratory technicians to do other things. Matest expects to sell the splitter to laboratories