A social media post from the Lincolnshire Police Specialist Operations’ Twitter account has displayed the horrendous condition of some of Britain’s roads and detailed the impact that can have on motorcyclists in particular.
The Tweet shows an image of a pothole to which a motorcyclist fell victim, causing them injuries. As they rightly say, the state of the road means it was an accident waiting to happen.
This is not a problem which is specific to Lincolnshire, either, even though the road in question is the responsibility of Lincolnshire Highways, not Highways England.
Road conditions, despite endless roadworks, seem to be declining across the country. Wherever you go, the roads are worn down, torn up, and filled with holes. The case specific to the Tweet is a particularly vicious one, but even still it is repeated across England in a way and with a frequency that simply is not even rivalled on the continent, or even elsewhere in Britain.
You would think that with the frequency with which travel is disrupted by roadworks, that the condition of the roads being worked on would be improved. However, the processes used to repair roads mean that they are often not repaired for long before they are in need of fixing again.
Perhaps the increase in road tax - by over £100 in some cases - will help improve the way in which repairs are conducted on the roads, and therefore decrease the frequency at which repairs are required.
However, fuel duty was decreased by 5p by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, last week. Yet, fuel prices remain monumental. So, maybe the road tax hike will make no difference.
You might also think that with the upcoming phasing out of combustion and phasing in of electric power, and the likelihood that that could lead to an increase of small-capacity motorcycle ownership, that the roads might be improved for that.
However, we are talking in relation to the government and the government of the moment is one which has such little regard for, and such a low opinion of, the people over which it governs that it has allowed the roads on which its people drive to deteriorate to such a condition in the first place; have allowed their cost of living to rise so dramatically with energy bills more than doubling; and are now trying to prevent their ability to protest an injustice, and have been doing so for a while.
The roads are awful, especially if you are a motorcyclist, but expecting or hoping for something to be done about it seems frankly hopeless, since the people who have the ability to do something about it have no interest in doing so.
