For grey nomads travelling the country, potholes are – unfortunately – an occupational hazard.
For the majority of the time they are little more than a suspension-shuddering inconvenience … but not always.
Earlier this year, a couple were seriously injured after their 18’ caravan after lurched into a deep pothole on the Victoria’s Princes Highway and swerved out of control before rolling down an embankment.
The ABC reports that Debbie was taken to Bairnsdale Hospital with significant bruising and other injuries, while her husband was flown to hospital in Melbourne with a fractured skull and a cut artery in his hand.
One of the couple’s two dogs, harnessed in the back seat, died in the crash.
Th accident, which happened as the pair were returning from a trip, once again highlighted just how dangerous – and how widespread – potholes are.
According to the ABC, the majority of Victoria’s regional roads were built post-WWII and are coming to the end of their lifespan, further impacted by increased traffic and extreme weather.
The Victorian government has provided Regional Roads Victoria (RRV) around $300 million this year to cover the upkeep of about 19,000 kilometres of road.
The RRV’s Paul Northey from told the ABC that it was not possible to have all roads up to scratch all of the time.
Debbie and her husband were incredibly lucky to survive the crash.
“We’re certainly required to keep the roads up to a certain condition,” Mr Northey said. “We have to do that in terms of the overall budgets that are provided to us, so we can’t have every single piece of road up to a certain standard at certain times.”
Across the past 12 months, RRV has worked on more than 210,000 potholes, having filled a similar number the year prior.
However, Natasha Frankensteiner from the Fix Our Rural Roads lobby group isn’t sure that’s enough.
“It’s not road surfaces that need fixing, it’s the road base,” Ms Frankensteiner told the ABC. “These roads, you can resurface it but I can almost guarantee those same potholes that are there will be back within a month.”
For her part, Debbie remains angry that potholes that were large enough to cause the accident that nearly destroyed her life are still there.
“I’m really, really angry,” she told the ABC. “Some days you feel like you’re taking your life into your own hands because you’re trying to avoid the huge damage that’s been done to our roads.”
She has called on the roads ministers from both levels of government to travel to East Gippsland and experience what she drives on every day.
“I think they live in their glass towers and they forget that just because you’ve got a chauffeured limousine on a highway that’s four lanes wide it doesn’t mean the rest of us have that luxury,” she told the ABC. “I want them to get out into the country and drive the roads and actually see firsthand what it’s like.”
Victoria would probably have the worst roads in the country. A couple of years ago we drove from NSW into East Gippsland and you knew exactly when you crossed the border. It was like going from a highway to a goat track (I don’t mean to insult the goat) but Victorian roads are attrocious. We don’t know how to build roads or they are built to the cheapest quote.
The road from Wisemans ferry north to Wollombi has to be the worst road I have traveled on in the few million km’s I have driven on in Australia. The dangerous pot holes on blind corners were a disgrace to the RMS and whoever else are responsible, after a trip from the hunter valley earlier this year just before the floods in NSW I was so angry I wrote to the NRMA and RMS and never got a reply, I said there will be a death on this road soon and it came true when there was a family broken by deaths on this very road.
The other problem on this road is the city slickers driving BMW’s, Audie’s, and Volvo’s as well as the town tractors taking up all the road at dangerous speeds and swerving to miss the broken edges, these pot holes were sometimes almost metre wide from the edge towards the centre line.
My only hope is the floods destroy the road causing it to be rebuilt. I have towed our caravan on all sort of roads and I was grateful I did not have the van on this trip.
The road to Rolleston/Springsure Qld is the worst road I’ve been on..It is a very bouncy road..Impossible to drive at 80km..had to reduce to 30km and that still didn’t help!!
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