It occurred to me last night driving to football just how much some of our roads are damaged and how the cold weather has made dangerous potholes even more dangerous.

Putting myself as the driver last night I found myself having to evade many of these holes and it was more noticeable as a driver than as a cyclist. Why?

As a cyclist, with a quick look over the shoulder and a slight adjustment you can get round them. If there’s a car coming, its very easy to bunny-hop over a dangerous hole without a second thought, or with thin wheels, to nip through the smallest of gaps between the pavement and pothole and arrive at the other side of the hole safely.

As a driver, its difficult, especially with a car in the outside lane, to do anything other than drive over these potholes, causing untold damage to the underside of your car.

Then, bizarrely, my boss mentioned a new site this morning to me about Potholes where you can register the potholes that you encounter on your journey.

From their front page:
Hit a pothole, found a pothole, or just fed up with potholes?
With potholes estimated to cause as many as 1 in 5 mechanical failures on UK roads and costing motorists an estimated £320 million every year, Potholes.co.uk has been created to help you avoid the cost and misery they cause…

Whether your car’s been damaged by a pothole and you want to know how to make a claim against a local council or you just want to report a poor piece of road, this is the place you’ll find the information you need.

If you’ve got issues with potholes, let others know about them by reporting them and writing a story. On this site find advice from people all across the country who have been through the same thing.

Of course, the CTC have been running a pothole website for a long while.

From their front page:
The Problem
Potholes and road defects are more than just a nuisance, they’re a danger to cyclists. They’re responsible for 12% of compensation claims by CTC members, and local Councils have a duty to fix them.

What can I do?
Councils can’t be everywhere, and if they don’t know about a pothole, they can’t fill it in. So if you want to get it repaired, you have to report it.

Fillthathole.org.uk contacts the right people for you, to get the roads repaired quickly and easily. So you can spend your time riding, not dodging obstacles.

Both have the same message. If a council doesn’t know there is a dangerous pothole on one of their roads then they won’t be able to fix it.