Goodaye all, well I am currently in Mackay for the weekend and can’t unload until Monday morning. While the weather has been very wet for many, it has only made the roads worse. I will give credit here to the TMR crews who were out in the rain patching the Bruce Highway in a number of locations as I travelled north from Gympie, trying to keep the road as safe as possible in lousy conditions.
But there simply either weren’t enough of them, or they had not been allowed out early enough to stem the increase in potholes and damage and the biggest concern in the possible contribution to crashes. There was one car parked up after it seemed to hit a pothole and suffer a flat tyre. I have heard of many similar instances as of late and recall at one stage 10 cars being damaged near Gin Gin some time back.
Yet, even as I travelled sections without actual potholes, there are still sections that have not failed as such, but have dips and deformities that most likely are simply a bump in a car, but in a truck, just like the potholes, they continue to increase the cost of maintenance and repairs to every vehicle that hits these failures. When I have called road authorities in the past, they have willingly taken the details, only to see it still there months later.
This truck (as well as the last one and along with Ken Wilkie’s being the first ever to be able to do so) records road impacts into the truck and specs not only the location, but the severity of the impact. The original system was done manually – I had to hit a button approaching the bump, so I had to know before I was there. Like all things, it has not only evolved to be done automatically, but is currently set to only record impacts over 1.6g.
1g is the weight as the vehicle stands on the road, so this system obviously sits behind a set of scales to get your weights, but then operates in the background for the road recording. There was (and still is) a savage dip west of the pads at one location and I called TMR and reported it many years ago. When I rang again and complained it was still there, I was told it did not meet their level for repair. I disagreed and said it was a hazard and dangerous and needed fixing.
I then said I could provide data to prove this and was told, “your data (and of course he did not even know what it was) does not meet our criteria and so does not count”. In the magical land some of these people must live in, it seems bad roads must fix themselves then!
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I am happy for someone to prove me wrong, but when there is a failure in any road anywhere, regardless of whatever size, type and number of vehicles that hit the dip or pothole are, it will generally get worse, sometimes to the point of a severe failure that may cause or contribute to a crash. Of course, the other issue is that a component hitting said failure may not fail at the point of impact, but may be weakened and fail later, whether it be in an hour, a day or a week. Of course, you then can’t prove where it was damaged, but that won’t matter to you if you are in hospital or dead!
I have been ringing road authorities for over 20 years and if you travel south on the Hume, you can still see a patch I had done there that survives to this day and fixed a fairly savage dip in the concrete. I can list hundreds of others that have been fixed, some minor and some major, and still ring with one thing in mind – saving someone’s life.
It does seem like it is getting harder to get them to listen and act. Recently I called a person in one such institution and said I was concerned and needed his response. There was a section of road on the Newell I had reported specifically by destination, through a number of emails, so I have evidence of this and there had been work done within 50 metres of the site and it was left there.
When I saw work near there, I expected it would be included and when the work crew moved south past it, I called the number that day and asked if it would be done – surely they would not miss such a hazard while crews were working that close? They would nearly have fallen over it.
When I next travelled over it, the driver in front actually complained on the UHF that the same bump had nearly torn the wheel out of his hands, saying he normally straddled it, but with a truck coming the other way, he couldn’t. I then mentioned the bump to another mate and he said, “yes that one off the bridge that nearly throws you out of the truck?”, so we are not talking of a small failure.
When I rang this fellow, I said, “I don’t ring up for fun, I don’t ring about a divot the size of my palm, this is a serious hazard. I have reported it many months ago and you came and fixed the road either side of it and left it there and to us, that looks not only pretty damn stupid and that our lives simply don’t count, but it will now cost you more to come back and fix it, if you do so at all!”.
I then listed two other issues, one very serious where there are already skid marks off the side of the road where someone hit it and again, I asked, “why should I bother and does anyone care?”. I am waiting for the reply.
Safe Travelling, Rod Hannifey.
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