The latest AA warning.
‘Avoid driving through puddles in case they are potholes.”
The AA is advising us hard-pressed motorists to “avoid puddles” following a record month of pot-hole-related breakdowns.
It received 52,541 callouts in October for vehicles damaged by pot-hole-related breakdowns – a 12% rise on the same period last year.
Quelle surprise! Any of us poor souls forced to navigate Surrey’s hole-ridden landscape could have written that script. However, having sat for hours awaiting recovery, one of our WW bloggers asks?
How, the hell are we supposed to see the puddles in the dark, drving back from work in a stream of traffic, at night with led headlights blinding us as they approach in the pelting rain?”
Tell us, please?
We would do anything to prevent the puncture, the damaged wheel and shock absorbers, the broken suspension springs and the huge garage repair bill that Surrey County Council refused to pay.
One of our bloggers knows and has the invoice to prove it!
The county council has a well-rehearsed string of excuses for not repaying motorists, even though you couldn’t begin to relate the inconvenience, the working hours lost, hospital appointments missed, and the misery of sitting on the roadside in the dark, trying to direct the traffic around you on a country road. Full of potholes covered by puddles.
So Mr Tony Rich, the AA spokesman, said:
“Our advice to drivers and those on two wheels, is to void puddles where safe, but if there is no alternative other than to travel through, then reduce your speed and keep an incresed distance from the vehicle in front.”
Easier said than done, Mr Rich. Ask a few cyclists what they think about swerving around puddles. Here at the WW, we picked one off the road and took him to A & E – no doubt he is now off work. I think it is what the Chancellor calls Growing the Economy.
Whilst we are on the subject of road safety. What has happened to all the cat’s eyes and white lines on our roads? Have they gone blind, or have we?
“There are whole stretches of road in Surrey that are breaking up in the centre, and the cat’s eyes are either severely damaged or are missing.