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.
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.
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.
