Cyclist who “cheated death” after hitting pothole sues council that was aware of “invisible crack” for six weeks

Quote:

Williamson added that the council had acknowledged inspecting the road after the first reported crash but deemed it not dangerous enough to require urgent repair.

Let me guess: someone drove over the pothole in one of the council's fleet of two-tonne dual-cab Toyota Hiluxs, barely felt a thing, and concluded it was no threat to any modern car's suspension. So they pencilled-in a revisit for a couple of years time, to see if by that stage it'd got to state that would justify paying £20K to an independent contractor, the brother-in-law of someone high up in the council, to dump some tarmac into it.

Try riding in Surrey - they don't fix anything, so every trip's like Russian roulette.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any document or policy containing, either in the text itself or in a description, the word 'robust' is 95+% likely to be a load of tripe and lies. Other 'reporter' words are available, such as 'holistic'.

My Local Highways Authority has "Robust Procedures in Place" to manage potholes.

The website states -

"You have a right to make a claim for compensation if your property has been damaged as a result of a pothole or other defect on a road or footpath. But you will only be given compensation if we are found to have been negligent or in breach of our legal duty under the Highways Act to maintain the highway.

To carry out our responsibilities under the Highways Act, we inspect roads and footpaths regularly following our Code of Practice for Highway Safety Inspections (PDF, 1.5MB). We identity and record defects and repair any we identify as being dangerous. The Highways Act recognises though that it’s not possible to prevent all defects.

This means that in law, the appearance of a defect doesn’t necessarily mean we have been negligent. We must use this law in our defence where appropriate. Any money we pay in compensation comes from public funds, and we have a duty to protect these funds."

The criteria for declaing a pothole to be dangerous is available and ts clearly motornormative. A defect which is dangerous for a cyclist is only a minor issue for a motor vehicle.

For example:-

1) Groove in the road. Get your front wheel in a groove and you will come off

2) Sharp edges. If you ore on (say) 28mm tyres a pothole deeper than 28mm with sharp edges can blow a tyre or break a rim.

3) Angled edges. A pothole with sharp angled edges can turn the front wheel and cause a fall.

4) Multiple potholes. Avoid one pothole and you are perfectly lined up for the next one.

5) Camouflaged Potholes. Under dappled shade caused by trees in sunny weather, or in the dark.

Etc…..

Why don't the cycling bodies produce a definitve document and send it to every LHA in the country?

It's a common occurence, see here - 
https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/cyclist-paid-compensati...
Living up in Aberdeenshire the roads are bad, I often report potholes etc via the local council app and you can see multiple reports for that strecth of road.  I'm not sure at what point they decide that a road must be repaired.  
Lately I have seen many small potholes and defects repaired, they have one of the JCB pothole repair machines and seem to making good use of it, although there's still a reasonable sized team that accompanies the JCB.  
Roz that is mentioned in that article is a rather keen cyclist, which probably helps when arguing the case for the defendent as she knows exactly their perspective.

"Williamson added that the council had acknowledged inspecting the road after the first reported crash but deemed it not dangerous enough to require urgent repair."

Not dangerous for drivers, but lethal for cyclists.  How can you say that a defect isn't dangerous enough when it has already caused an incident?

Of course there's "underinvestment while building more and more roads".  And as others have mentioned the metrics for "good enough" / "needs urgent repair" all being designed around motor vehicles.

Do we also have a problem because we seem to have have lots of "works" that affect the roads, many done by private companies, often with long chains of subcontractors.  Is it just too hard / council don't have resource to ensure that these are done properly (e.g. don't leave all your kit in the cycle track by default...) and are adequately made good?

Or is it just that there isn't enough pressure on people in councils to deliver safe road infra?  Perhaps the cost/benefit says "just pay the compensation" too often?  Edinburgh council seemed to take this line for a long time with the tram infra they'd been advised was not safe enough but they made anyway - result: lots of people injured, paying millions in damages.

Meanwhile in NL ... (quick patching, more "avoiding potholes developing", types of maintenance, longer term road renewal).  There does seem to be a different attitude (different organisational structural responsibilities?).  Certainly in NL there seems to be a "wait a bit longer but then update everything to current best practice" policy.  In Edinburgh when major resurfacing takes place it seems to be "take it all up then put it back the same way".  OTOH maybe that reflects that our road policy and designs simply haven't evolved in a long time...

There are a lot of aspects of cycling where I live that I wouldn't wish on anyone else, but my city has an app for reporting road problems (and other problems). I encountered a pothole in the bike lane on my ride to work one day, reported it, and received an e-mail that it had been patched by lunch. And the next day, I rode past it and saw that indeed it had been.

I suspect this is another example of motonormativity: that the council's risk assessment is based on road defects that could potentiallly damage cars, and fails to properly consider the risk that a narrow crack poses to cyclists.

For example, this guidance suggests a longitudinal crack is only a safety concern when it is >40mm wide: https://www.n-somerset.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020-05/highway%20safe...

Given most road bike tyres are <40mm, a narrower crack is perfectly capable of trapping a wheel and causing a crash (which I assume is what happened to both the cyclists mentioned who had crashed in this location).

That "Gloucestershire Live" link in the fifth paragraph goes to an Indian "find therapists near you" site.

....therapyroute.com/therapists/india/jaipur/1

This story is in the Bristol Post.  You can imagine the typical comments BTL: apparently the consensus is that cyclists should pay "road tax" because then there wouldn't be any potholes.

I've never not been astounded in how repairs are done on roads in this country, the majority of roads truly damaged whether it be by usage or erosion mostly the former. Many things need to change in this country yet it carries on regardless and it's just a joke!