Image credit: Rod Stewart instagram
Last week veteran crooner Sir Rod Stewart put potholes in the news again, with concerns over the damage they could cause to his fleet of five sports cars.
Writing on Instagram, he said: “I am extremely fortunate and eternally grateful to be the owner of these five beautiful hybrid sports cars, which, in my opinion are true ‘works of art’. Unfortunately, because of the potholes on our roads, I may have to find new owners for them.”
Few drivers can boast a car collection like Sir Rod’s, as some of the less positive comments on his Instagram post attested to, however Sir Rod’s concerns seem to be borne out by statistics released last week by insurer Allianz. It reports that 21% of car accidents caused by potholes lead to cars being written off.
Allianz says that it has paid out almost £4.6 million for 1,266 pothole claims since the beginning of this year, giving the example of a BMW 7 series M-Sport which struck a pothole on an A road at 60 mph. The BMW was so badly damaged that it had to be written off, costing Allianz £53,000 to settle the claim.
In addition to write-offs, insurers are paying out on claims for damaged wheels, damaged suspension, and misaligned bodywork. Meanwhile, Allianz says that a typical claim is now £4,000, compared to just over £30000 at the beginning of 2023, due to increases in labour costs and parts – as well as rising pothole damage.
“It’s a huge waste, and these costs feed back into the insurance premiums that many motorists are struggling to pay,” said Caroline Johnson, Allianz’s director of claims, in a press release.
This isn’t the first time that Sir Rod has raised the issues of potholes. The BBC reported two years ago that he and his friends had filled potholes in roads local to his home themselves since the road was in such bad condition that he couldn’t drive his Ferrari along it.
Councils such as Essex, which have a large proportion of country roads, face different challenges to those whose network is largely urban. Fixing pothole and other maintenance on narrow roads can be difficult, since closing them or restricting traffic flow causes congestion delaying people getting to work or school and even stopping people from travelling altogether.
The good news for Sir Rod is that Essex County Council will be spending more on road maintenance and repairs this year. A spokesperson told the BBC: "An additional £37m is being invested to address potholes and carry out larger scale works, like resurfacing and vegetation clearance, through our priority one programme.”
At Thermal Road Repairs, we are urging councils to deploy pothole repairs that are truly permanent, so that they don’t have to fix the holes repeatedly as they fail and fail again, wasting precious budget. Because our technology heats up the road around a pothole, new and old material are truly bonded so that there is no joint, which is always a weak point when using traditional repair methods.
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