Pothole

A pothole is a hole in a road where the road has gone to be somewhere else. Potholes are measured by depth, width, and the number of syllables a cyclist manages on meeting one.^[1]

Potholes form when water gets into a crack, freezes, expands and leaves. The road is left with a hole and no forwarding address.

Detection

A pothole cannot be seen until it has been driven into. Highway engineers describe this as both its defence and its attack.

Council surveyors locate a pothole by first establishing where the road is, and then where the road isn't. The difference between the two is the pothole, which is recorded on Form P-7 (Absence of Road) and countersigned by a second surveyor who has also looked into it.

Repair

Reporting a pothole begins a process involving an inspection, a second inspection to confirm the first, and a period of reflection lasting between one week and the end of the universe. Somewhere in this process a white circle is spray-painted around the hole. The white circle is the most common form of pothole repair in the developed world.^[2]

When it rains, a pothole fills up and becomes a puddle of unknown depth. It is the only body of water whose depth is measured in ankles.

Records

The deepest pothole on record was reported in 1987 and measured 0.4 metres, or, in the units required by the reporting form, “one and a half wellies”. It was repaired the following spring with the largest white circle ever painted, which is now itself listed.

See also

• Puddle – what a pothole pretends to be when it rains
• Roundabout – a road that goes round instead of down
• Rain – an accomplice

References

1. Tarmac, T. (2012). Mind the Gap. Asphalt Press. p. 4 (p. 3 missing).
2. Highways Sub-Committee on Holes (1998). “The White Circle: A Ten-Year Review”. Report pending.