Opinion : It’s time to automate the reporting of potholes

At the moment the roads of Wycombe are not that bad.

There maybe the the occasional pothole here and there but in general the roads of the town are far better than a few years ago.

Speedy repairs coupled with the re-surfacing of many roads have certainly made a difference indeed not even my good self can complain about poor road surfaces and potholes like in yesteryear.

Of course roads will always deteriorate through wear and tear and surface movements occur especially in hilly areas like High Wycombe where the roads are built on chalk subsoil.

I could not help but notice an article on a nation news site which announced that a special scanner is being developed to identify potential problems with the roads before they occur.

The new pothole scanner is attached to a vehicle which drives over the roads of the town with the scanner mounted on the front and it reveals where potential potholes could be lurking under the road surface before they are visible.

Isn’t that a clever idea? Just think how helpful it would be to know which roads are likely to fail next so pro-active repairs can take place.

In truth potholes are easy to repair, however the nuisance factor comes mainly because it takes so long to report them. Everyone seems to think that someone else will report the potholes so they stay on the roads festering away until someone like my good self comes along and takes action.

In this modern age surely it should be possible for the boffins to develop a machine which can report back where the road surface already has deteriorated and report the fault automatically?

Surely a black box could be created which could be placed in the boot of a car and every time it detects a jolt to the vehicle it could send the position back using the newfangled satellite positioning system?

Such a box could be produced easily and cheaply and then mounted in taxis, buses and other high usage vehicles that are on the roads every day.

Scanning the road for future problems is all very well but if the road surface is currently unusable why waste money putting right what isn’t yet causing a problem?

I say fix what’s wrong rather than waste money worrying about what may happen in the future.

What do you think?

*My next blog will be published on Tuesday evening around 8pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.