Potholes see 2.7 million cars forced off the road due to damage – survey

Pothole damage has forced nearly 2.7 million cars off the road in the last 12 months, a new report has found.

Kwik Fit’s Pothole Impact Tracker – PIT – spoke to 2,000 UK adults and discovered that 57 per cent had hit at least one pothole a week over the last 12 months. Applied to the wider population, this would see 13.1 million drivers suffering damage to their cars as a result of an impact with a pothole.

The average repair bill received by each driver was £127, meaning that the nation’s motorists have forked out £1.7bn in pothole-related vehicle repairs. Kwik Fit’s research and analysis of government data also shows that the cost of repairing this damage has more than doubled since 2013, despite the number of cars on the road only increasing by 10 per cent in the same time period.

More than half of drivers spoken to say that the condition of the roads in their area is worse than ten years ago, with 39 per cent saying that they are ‘signficantly’ worse. Just one in eight say the roads are in better condition now than they were a decade ago.

Roger Griggs, communications director at Kwik Fit, said: “We know councils have huge demands on their budgets, but it is better that they are aware of a pothole as early as possible.

“The condition of road surfaces only goes in one direction, so the longer a problem is left, the more costly it will be to repair. And obviously, in the meantime, the more damage it will be doing to vehicles and causing problems for drivers whose vehicles are off the road.”

Some 47 per cent of respondents say that a portion of the money that the government raises through fuel duty and vehicle excise duty should be devoted to improving road surfaces, yet only one in ten would be prepared to pay more tax for direct spending on improving roads.