A lively discussion unfolds around the notorious UK pothole problem, sparked by Neil Clifford's dramatic encounter. The hosts explore the causes, including freeze-thaw cycles, heavy traffic, and underfunded maintenance, comparing the UK's situation unfavorably with countries like Japan and Germany. Chris Cooper reports live from a pothole-ridden street, highlighting the frustration of drivers and the lack of coordinated repairs. Manish adds scientific insight into why potholes form and why urban areas suffer uniquely. The episode touches on political neglect, conspiracy theories about road funding, and the irony of advanced repair technology being unused. The overall tone blends humor with genuine concern over the state of British roads.
"Here ye, here ye, it's an emergency podcast, we've got the circle red light, we've got klaxons and all sorts going off, because Chris Cooper is standing on a British road and he's telling us there are potholes, there are holes everywhere..."
Potholes are holes or bumps in the road that can make driving bumpy and can hurt your car if you hit them.
Potholes are depressions or holes in the road surface caused by wear and weather conditions, which can damage vehicles and affect driving safety.
"it's about this thing that's called three, three, I can't even say it, freeze, thaw, weather cycles, I would imagine that Manish will be able to explain that much better than me,"
Freeze-thaw cycles happen when water gets into cracks in the road, freezes into ice and makes the cracks bigger, then melts and makes the road break more.
Freeze-thaw cycles occur when water seeps into cracks in the road, freezes and expands, then thaws and contracts, causing the road surface to break apart and form potholes.
"...e it's just a bit of a joke everyone's just by a Ford Raptor, Chris Cooper back to you at the scene of the cri..."
The Ford F-150 is a big truck that many people use for work or fun because it's tough and reliable. There's a special version called the Raptor that's made to drive really well off-road, which a lot of people like. The conversation probably means that many people choose the Raptor instead of the regular truck.
The Ford F-150 is a full-size pickup truck known for its durability, versatility, and strong sales in the United States. It's often discussed due to its popularity among truck buyers and the high-performance Raptor variant, which is designed for off-road use. The mention likely refers to the common trend of buyers opting for the more powerful and rugged Raptor model.
"so I've been waiting for actually some interesting cars coming by Little Mx5 came past it's been passed twice now"
The Mazda MX-5 is a small, sporty car with two seats and a roof that can fold down. People like it because it's fun to drive and easy to handle.
The Mazda MX-5 is a lightweight, two-seat convertible sports car known for its excellent handling and driving enjoyment. It is often praised for being affordable and fun to drive.
"this is called the JCB Pothole Pro oh isn't that brilliant right it's an amazing machine made by Lord Banford and his pals"
JCB is a company that makes big machines used to fix roads and do construction work, like the pothole fixing machine talked about here.
JCB is a British multinational corporation that manufactures equipment for construction, agriculture, waste handling, and demolition, including the JCB Pothole Pro machine mentioned here.
"10 seconds 15 seconds fortunately I was in a car with the sort of tire pressure monitor system and then you get the noise the dreaded ding and you're like"
A tire pressure monitor system is a device in your car that tells you if your tires don't have enough air, so you can fix them before they cause problems.
A tire pressure monitor system (TPMS) is an electronic system that monitors the air pressure inside pneumatic tires on vehicles and alerts the driver when tire pressure is dangerously low.
"you need to buy two you can't just have one you need to do the front both to buy two bloody tires keep your balance wheel cost me six get it balance cost me about 700 quid"
Wheel balancing means making sure your tires spin evenly so your car doesn't shake or the tires wear out too fast.
Wheel balancing is the process of equalizing the weight of the combined tire and wheel assembly so that it spins smoothly at high speed, preventing vibrations and uneven tire wear.
"the united kingdom golf mark 7 gti there I would say well I'll tell you one thing from the inside of knowledge one of the biggest tire sellers in the country"
The Volkswagen Golf Mark 7 GTI is a fun and fast version of the Golf car that many people like because it drives well and looks sporty.
The Volkswagen Golf Mark 7 GTI is a sporty hatchback from Volkswagen's seventh generation Golf lineup, known for its performance and handling.
"and safe from what's going on in the field but there's a solution old cars with very high profile tires are not affected by this at all"
High profile tires have thick sides that help make the ride softer and protect the wheels from bumps and holes in the road.
High profile tires have taller sidewalls compared to low profile tires, which can provide a more comfortable ride and better protection against road damage like potholes.
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Here ye, here ye, it's an emergency podcast, we've got the circle red light, we've got
klaxons and all sorts going off, because Chris Cooper is standing on a British road and he's
telling us there are potholes, there are holes everywhere, this was started actually by Neil
Clifford two weeks ago, we've stalled him, he hit a pothole with the car and decided
that the earth has stopped rotating, it was such important news that we had to have an
emergency podcast about potholes, which are a blight on the UK at the moment, so let's start
off with Neil Clifford, because frankly this is his emergency. It is, okay well I'm, we all,
this is the most important news in the whole of the UK at the minute, if you have any interesting
cars, I decided to quickly chat GPT if you don't mind, give me one minute, which says
why are the potholes in the UK terrible? Well chat GPT says short answer, a mix of weather,
heavy traffic and underfunded road maintenance means that the UK is the perfect environment
for potholes, basically we are really good, we are world champions at potholes and it's because,
and I'm sure Manish can explain this much better because he went to a very, very, very good
university, it's about this thing that's called three, three, I can't even say it, freeze,
thaw, weather cycles, I would imagine that Manish will be able to explain that much better than me,
but basically we are really good at potholes or we have the most terrible roads in the world,
if you look at Japan, you look at Germany, look at France, they're fixing these things in days,
in Japan hours, we're taking weeks, months, we haven't got any money, the priorities are somewhere
else, no one really cares about the car and you know what, I finalize it with, we should all go
on strike, if this was France, everyone would stop paying the road tax and then when the money dries
up, maybe the government would be motivated to fix these roads because it's costing everyone,
I know tens of people that have had punches and in fact even ruined wheels, it's costing the
country a load of money, a load of time, a load of hassle, so we're all a bit pissed off.
Chris Cooper is reporting from a live actual pothole on a street, can you tell us what situation
is on the ground please? Well that's a big pothole there, hang on, I'm actually in the middle of the
road, I'm just going to, don't do this I haven't killed them, well I've been here most of the morning
and I spoke into a number of potholes, none of them wanted to come on camera and say how they
really felt, they're all a bit fed up with these potholes, everybody's been in them,
they've got their full of alloy grits and little shavings and bits of rubber,
everyone's fed up with this and I think actually, I met earlier on actually a putative representative
of a pothole trade union, the potholes are going to mobilise against this, it's just all downside,
it's all downside, it is, the freeze is all phenomenon is a part of it, but I think there's
also the sort of the hydraulics of the matter, when you get a little hole in the surface, cars are
bigger and heavier, bigger wider tyres, more water gets forced in, obviously you come from
press water, which is why watering engines is a very bad idea, things tend to punch out the side
and there's been a lot of rain, even if it hasn't frozen, it's been a lot of rain,
there's a hole opens up in the surface of the road and this one down here, so this one here,
actually the road is a little bit clear, let me show you this one, these drains here don't work,
if it's a car behind me, do shout won't you, these drains here don't work down there, so these
puddles here, this lifted literally everything there, oh I can hear a car, so it's dreadful,
I mean I think the problem is what's the solution, I know we don't like solutionising,
but it feels like no one's in charge of potholes, if there was somebody whose job it was to say
here's my area, I can tell you where all the potholes are because I've just punched a little
thing on the map of my iPhone, I know on Monday morning what I'm going to do, there's somebody,
I don't see any sort of social media, somebody going around painting an outline around the potholes
of a penis, it's actually quite good and they've been, yeah I'm not sure this is language for
Sunday morning, but they've been nicknamed wanksies, these things, so yeah, yeah we've had enough of
potholes. Manish, Manish you're sort of our metropolitan correspondent, how do you feel
about potholes from a a metrosexual position as someone who spends most of their time taking
public transport around London? I have to tell you I think in some ways being in a
metropolitan area is the worst of all worlds and I was thinking about this, if you think about
a nasty pothole on a motorway you're travelling very quickly and so what happens is the edge of
a pothole will effectively just launch your wheel and it won't drop very much by the time it reaches
the other side of a pothole, now if you go extremely slowly one mile an hour, two miles an hour and
you hear the pothole, you kind of creep down the front of the pothole, you travel along the bottom
and then you climb the other side of the pothole at 20 miles an hour, it's almost the most 20 to
30 miles an hour, I've decided the most lethal speed to get at because you don't get launched,
you drop and you don't have enough speed not to catch the lip at the other end, and yesterday
I mean literally I was driving near Islington, a reasonable light, I had my headlights on with
Lola as you know she's got not the greatest ground clearance and it was as if somebody had hammered
her front right wheel with a giant mallet when I hit a pothole at 20 miles that was just a massive
bang and you sit there and you think actually we do probably have the worst of all worlds,
a freeze thought phenomenon by the way just it comes from a biological principle known as the
anomalous expansion of water, so normally when you get a liquid and you turn it into a solid it
shrinks, if you imagine any pond did that and became solid solid all life would be extinguished,
you'd just be freezing things and ice, so the anomalous expansion of water by expanding when
it freezes that layer goes to the top, it's lighter than water so what ends up happening
is life can continue underneath it, the problem is water permeates things, expands when it freezes
so cracks them from the inside and as Chris has said once you start making things porous and full
of holes and pour more water on top of that and put a truck on top of that it's like exploding,
I mean literally it's like charging a road with dynamite and I think you're right this country's
just perfect for it, our road works just perfect for it and we have no money because we spend it
all I think mostly on health care and social services so I think we've got to work out what we
want to do. I think brilliantly summarised the pothole without realising it the innocent pothole
it's sort of become the metaphor for everything that's wrong about the UK isn't it, sadly you
you can draw in all the aspects of stuff that annoy us politically day-to-day funding, priorities,
all these words but the reality is it reminds us that the road is still the arterial life
form of this country whether we like it or not and whether politicians like it or not and it is
hugely neglected, I'm a great conspiracy theorist and I believe it's all part of trying to defund
the road network and force us out of our cars, I've written about it before for 20 years I just
think it's so obvious that the road is not being funded, we've got all the equipment and if we
want to we have the resources to fix them, we can do it all but politicians choose not to, I live
in Bristol and Bristol is known to be green and yeah it's just ridiculous at times, I walked to
some local residents got so fed up they've just put a ballard in one of them just to say
drive around it, yes and the irony is if you've done what I've done for the last couple of decades
go around the world to drive cars you come across these funny roads in the middle of nowhere
and they're always perfect and they always have a little sign with a little Chinese flag that says
belted road initiative so you'll be in Africa and the Chinese would have kindly bought them a road
they want nothing in return honestly so but the roads are immaculate, the roads are immaculate
and they feed this sense that we're a slightly third world country because you can find perfect
roads anywhere on the planet now apart from the UK, honestly we're third world in this respect
it's an absolute joke, I totally agree with Chris Cooper there, we don't help it by driving cars
that on average would be twice as heavy as they were 20 years ago that's not going to help the
situation but even so there used to be the ability to what let's just say they used to be the desire
to keep our roads in a state that meant there was some pride but now we don't really care it's just
a bit of a joke everyone's just by a Ford Raptor, Chris Cooper back to you at the scene of the crime
so I've been waiting for actually some interesting cars coming by Little Mx5 came
past it's been passed twice now I wonder whether it might be a family's podcast looking to make
a sort of a brief cameo but I'm just the road is just clearing actually I'm just so um there's
this one here can you see this one here I mean look I mean I mean that's just I mean it's just
massive oh there's a car coming, oh there's a car behind me, they're very deep now they're much deeper
than before, that actually does look like the magnet the centre of the earth doesn't it that's the
which is actually very close inside the road um that is very very people are slowing down now
maybe they're attracting a bit too much attention I don't know um so it is it's now the end it's now
spring it's now officially spring the pothole should migrate back to Siberia is that what they do
are they a migratory species I hope they are I do think it's as simple as they should be fixed
we're paying for we're paying for these things to be fixed really aren't we this is the solution
right this is called the JCB Pothole Pro oh isn't that brilliant right it's an amazing machine made
by Lord Banford and his pals it costs between 165,000 and 200,000 pounds to purchase which
if you apply that to a normal finance cost would be about 1000 pounds a month so any council could
buy one of those for a grand a month and go ahead and fix potholes but they've sold about four in the
UK because no councils want to buy them yeah it's uh it's an honestly the solution is there
but no one wants to do it this is all part of a conspiracy theory they're rubbing their hands
in Westminster going we'll get all these little wankers out of their cars and they'll be on public
transport soon it's all a conspiracy theory and it is that time of the year it looks like it
and we've all grown up with this where local authorities start spending money on things
because it's getting to the end of the public sector accounting year at the end of March the
beginning of April and everywhere right now you hear people say oh yeah there's lots of
things going on because the councils have got to spend the money apart from putting aside
the neediest frustration of I've got to spend the money on something otherwise I won't get
next year I'll still be skeptical of stuff like that and I mean it's true normally you would
you would see people fixing them I haven't seen one person fixing one part oh no agreed but they're
doing other they're doing other things so what so Neil talk to me through what happened to you
and what the what the result was well I had that amazing you know the challenge of the PSI challenge
when yes you yeah it's like it's actually quite exciting because you hit a pothole
it's dark you're like shit that's that was bad what's gonna happen and you wait you wait about
10 seconds 15 seconds fortunately I was in a car with the sort of tire pressure monitor system
and then you get the noise the dreaded ding and you're like shit can I get home then you've got
those three options do I just I'm just driving it till it goes flat and leaving the car and getting
an Uber and getting to the station do I risk it do I think that it's a slow puncher and I just get
to work or do I circle around emergency and get back to the house and then the safe one for me I
was two miles from home it's five in the morning circle round quickly quick you turn back on the
same journey don't hit the same pothole that would be a muppet move and then you watch the
PSI 2.8 2.6 2.2 and I got home with 0.5 dumped the car called James from Crescent Tires who's
actually maybe this is a growth strategy for the government the tire people are making a fortune
and the wheel non-bendy people I needed I needed to redo my wheel that was like 200 quid new tire
probably 200 quid and then you know that we're out of stock of the winter tires obviously no one in
the country has got the right bloody tire so you've got a way you need to buy two you can't just have
one you need to do the front both to buy two bloody tires keep your balance wheel cost me six
get it balance cost me about 700 quid this has happened to hundreds and hundreds of people
in the olden days there was that debate wasn't there well I'm going to sue the local council
absolutely zero chance of course no one bothers with that anymore so it cost me 700 quid there
are hundreds and hundreds of people maybe this is a way of driving up the the growth strategy of the
united kingdom golf mark 7 gti there I would say well I'll tell you one thing from the inside of
knowledge one of the biggest tire sellers in the country a group had their best ever week
in the third week of january there you go yeah no there is one solution we'll end on a positive
note though Chris Cooper obviously is right on the front line there so we need to keep him away
and safe from what's going on in the field but there's a solution old cars with very high profile
tires are not affected by this at all I was in my even in my integrally which has got quite a
fleshy tire considered low profile of the day I managed to whack into I hit a curb by mistake
and then I launched into a pothole and I thought I got out thinking I expect to see a wheel in pieces
yes it was just a great big that lovely sort of thumbprint of the of the curb in the side wall
but it was absolutely fine whereas if you hit that with mr. Cooper's wheel it's going to shatter
another reason to drive cool old cars yeah but I think I think we can clue that emergency there
Chris Cooper anything more to add no the morning getting busier here now as it said I've seen
us on social media a lot said in the UK we used to as always drive on the left of the road
now we're just driving on what's left of the road
yeah I think so and also everyone should go and find out about wanksy in Manchester it's a very
good piece of installation art that is causing ripples Neil Clifford who was mostly affected by
this do you feel that your emergency has been listened to now no I'm very appreciative finally
of my colleagues listening to my constant whinging fantastic managed from the comfort of north
london how do you feel about potholes today well I'm just thinking that perhaps we ought to let
the chinese build that jam massive embassy of theirs if they promise to just come and fix all our
roads and then we do it they can spy on us um just fix old cars potholes political negotiations
solutions that's what you find on this podcast that was us discussing potholes the emergency
global service will resume later in the week bye bye
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