It must be thirty years since I first wrote about the poor condition of the roads in Cork. There was a crater at the bottom of Faggot Hill in Blarney at that time that was eating car wheels for fun. In a fit of frustration I wrote a letter to a national newspaper to let off some steam. I did feel a small bit better after it but now after all these years I’m still complaining about the same thing so obviously it was a waste of time.
I didn’t think that my letter was going to get Charlie Haughey all riled up at the cabinet table and demand that the Minister for Pot Holes take immediate action. But there was so much annoyance generally about the condition of the roads at that time that I did think that popular opinion might have made some impact. God bless my innocence.
In those days there were so many roads in such a bad state that the life expectancy of your shock absorbers, suspension and tyres was similar to that of a hedgehog attempting to cross the M50 at rush-hour, short. Every so often a council truck would appear and a couple of guys would throw some tar at the bad bits of the road and smack it down with the back of the shovel. Then after a two hour tea break they would add a bit of gravel and head off home.
For the next week or so you would have to drive around with one hand on the glass to avoid getting a cracked windscreen from some of the flying gravel. Then the rain would come and remove the gravel from the holes again and normal service would resume. The pot holes would sprout up like weeds and they would remain there until the council lads managed to get their hands on another fill of tar.
It’s sad to see that thirty years later we still seem to be playing the same silly game. There are pot holes and sunken drain covers on the main road coming out of Cobh and they have been there for the last twelve months at least. At some point council officials put white paint around them. I’m not sure if this was done to reward them for having been there for so long or whether it was marking them for some future improvement. In any event, nothing happened except that the paint faded so they will have to be repainted soon.
The main road into Midleton has its share of bumps and hollows and the roads down in Castlemartyr and Killeagh are nothing short of disgraceful. This is a main national primary route we’re talking about here. Once you start to travel on the secondary roads then that’s a different experience completely, similar to off road driving. If I had to live in some of these areas permanently I would leave my car somewhere near the main road and walk home.
Apart from the damage and the wear and tear that our cars have to suffer, there is also another issue. At a time when the RSA and An Garda Siochana are calling on all drivers to exercise more care when driving to reduce fatalities on our roads, it doesn’t help that you have to spend half your time staring at the road trying to identify a potentially dangerous pothole and then swerving at the last miniute to avoid it.
It’s worse in wet weather when these potholes can be covered with water and lying in wait to try to drown some unsuspecting driver. There are times when it is necessary to cross the centre line in the road to avoid a bad surface. That is dangerous and at the very least, it’s a distraction that we could all do without.
I recall driving to Midleton from Whitegate a few years ago and I went into a pothole as I approached the dual carriageway. There was a serious bang from the front of the car and despite a number of trips to the garage afterwards, the car was never the same.
That’s not good enough. We pay a lot for our cars and part of the reason they are so expensive is due to the amount of tax we pay on them. That’s money we give to the Government. We pay road tax which is more money we give to the Government. We pay a huge amount of tax on our motor fuel which is more money we give to the Government. This seems to be all one way traffic. We’re coughing up millions in revenue but all we get in return are broken cars driving on broken roads.
If that’s not bad enough we have to take our cars for an NCT to be tested for roadworthiness to make sure that they’re not too badly broken and that they are fit to be driven on the broken roads. And we have to pay for that privilege too. And why does a four year old car need an NCT in the first place?
Now it looks as if insurance companies are getting in on the act. These days it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of a car you drive or what age you are or what experience you have, you are going to pay through the nose. Insurance premiums have gone through the roof in the last twelve months and there seems to be little if any regulation.
Insurance companies seem to be able to charge what they like and it’s never their fault. The threat of losing your no claims bonus prevents you from claiming so they’re on a winner but it’s costing me a fortune just to take my broken car out on to the broken road.