21 November 2023 , 14:01
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A woman was left shocked after a 'hidden' pothole cost her £150 in damages.
Sandra Hilton, 71, was driving to the dentist when her Audi hit the large hole, hidden by flood water. Despite only going 20mph, Sandra heard a loud "almighty bang" as she drove in Caverswall, Staffordshire. She checked her car but thought it was fine. It was only when her car started making a "racket" that she decided to skip her dental appointment and take her vehicle to a garage. On closer inspection, the front tyre was completely flat.
Sandra's Audi A4 needed a new tyre and wheel alignment which cost her £150. She told StokeonTrentLive: "There are ditches and grids which are blocked solid. The farmer is the only person who I have seen trying to clear the blocked ditches here, trying to get rid of standing water on the lane. At times of heavy rain and particularly in the winter, what happens? Potholes happen. The maintenance people came down in spring and did some of the holes, but now they're all holes again."
Sandra was driving 20mph when she heard an "almighty bang" (Pete Stonier/Stoke Sentinel)"I've never seen them doing anything but a temporary job. It doesn't last five minutes." Sandra said, describing her struggle to walk her two pet Shar Pei dogs on the 'once-leafy' lane. "When you're walking up there, the cars are constantly going up and down," she added. "I'm being beeped at all the time but I don't have anywhere to get out of the way. It's just terrifying really. Since they changed the layout, it's like a rat-run. Before, we only had village traffic. It can be very nasty. It's not fair (that the potholes have not been repaired). We pay road tax and council tax - we pay what the council asks us to pay."
Robert Pritchard, Cabinet support member for highways and transport at Staffordshire County Council, said: "All our roads are inspected regularly to check for safety defects, because we know that it is important to invest in keeping them safe and well maintained. Residents can report potholes individually through the Report It function on our website."
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"From there, we prioritise what potholes are repaired first depending on the severity of the defect. If a pothole causes damage to a resident's vehicle, they have a right to make a claim for compensation on our website."
"As a county council, we are committed to fixing more of Staffordshire's roads and have invested £30 million to deliver on this promise in the next two years. We have used this money to invest in ground breaking AI technology to identify defects and innovative machinery like the JCB Pothole Pro to repair them. On average, we fill a pothole every eight minutes and we repaired over 16,000 carriageway potholes in 2022 alone."
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to [email protected]