Love '˜em or loathe '˜em, there's no escaping potholes | Reader's Letter

What is it about potholes? British drivers just can't seem to get enough of them. Love '˜em or loathe '˜em, there's no escaping them.
Picture: Steve RobardsPicture: Steve Robards
Picture: Steve Robards

Some experts claim they are caused by the recent snowfall, while others maintain they are the work of those beastly 4x4 leviathans sometimes known as Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), their huge tyres clawing and gouging at the usually sturdy yet pliant tarmacadam.

Trouble is, though, it’s the poor old car driver who falls foul of these craters that seem to lurk in ambush. Wallop! That’s all I need, a burst tyre and that nice shiny hubcap spinning down the road like a malevolent tiddly-wink.

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Still, if this were to happen to our unfortunate driver, let us say for example in an entirely random and hypothetical situation and location such as Harlow town in Essex maybe?

Let us take our hypothesis a little further and imagine this occured on a dark and rainy Saturday evening when the tyre-fitting garages are all closed. Perhaps the car is of a modern design with no spare wheel, just a tin of that repair goo (no good as the tear in the tyre is too large), and our (speculative) driver, his wife and his extremely anxious, autistic daughter still had over a hundred miles to travel to get home.

Why, I’d wager there would be a local, mobile tyre-fitter who our (hypothetical) driver would be able to reach out to, and discover to his relief that this knight of the road would save the day by supplying and fitting a brand spanking new tyre at the rock-bottom (pun intended) cost of £170.

In addition to this, the big-hearted fellow would only require a modest call-out charge of £80! It’s only a theoretical situaton, though, isn’t it?

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I have just opened a bag of my favourite Wine-gums only to discover that they have reduced the size by nearly half. Bah!

Tony Fenlon

Bursledon Road, Waterlooville