‘If we don't fix Britain's potholes, more people like my husband will die'

Telegraph

09-05-2025

When police knocked on the door one night in September 2022 – blue lights flashing through the glass – Aileen Newcombe had no idea her life was about to change forever. In 51 years of marriage, she and her husband Robert had only spent five nights apart – back in 1980, when he flew to Madrid to watch Nottingham Forest win the European Cup.
But a single pothole meant they would never share a bed again.
Robert was a keen motorcyclist. Over the course of his life, he had upgraded from simple runarounds to a Harley Davidson and, eventually, the Scout Bobber he was driving on the day he died.
Aged 70, he was, ironically, out for a memorial drive in remembrance of Sonny Barger – the founder of the Hells Angels – when he hit a pothole on the A43 in Northamptonshire and was thrown from his vehicle.
Police concluded Robert had slid 170ft before landing on the kerb of a roundabout, suffering catastrophic head injuries and a broken neck. He died at the scene.
'He was the safest driver in the world,' Aileen says from the sitting room of her son John's house, in Derbyshire, where she now lives. 'It is a disgrace that our roads are in this state. A disgrace.'
The growing pothole crisis
Potholes continue to claim lives across Britain. According to the latest Department for Transport figures, poor or defective road surfaces – including visible hazards like potholes and cracks – contributed to 7,195 deaths and injuries in the UK between 2014 and 2023. Among them were 97 fatalities.
The grim statistics underline the dire state of the country's roads. Government data shows that one in five councils in England report at least 10 per cent of their minor roads are in poor condition – and the outlook is only getting worse. In 2024, just 2.5 per cent of B and C roads maintained by local authorities in England received any form of maintenance. That equates to a mere 130ft per mile – the lowest level since records began in 1985.
According to the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), there are now more than a million potholes across England and Wales – an average of six for every mile driven. The toll on motorists is staggering: in 2024 alone, pothole-related damage cost drivers £579 million, up by more than £100 million from the previous year, insurers report.
For Aileen, John and the rest of the family, meanwhile, the cost has been immeasurable.
Robert, a retired hospital porter, was riding with a group of fellow bikers when he struck a pothole while overtaking. At his inquest, the coroner concluded that his death was the result of a 'degraded road surface' on the A43.
Aileen has now launched legal action against North Northamptonshire Council, seeking 'substantial damages' – not only to clear her husband's name, after she says the council 'tried to blame' him for the crash, but also in the hope of pressuring local authorities across Britain to take better care of the country's crumbling roads.
Aileen's legal claim alleges that the section of the A43 where Robert died had melted and re-solidified as a result of 'poor quality repairs', creating a 'dangerous, undulating carriageway'. The council denies liability. Unless a settlement is reached, the case will go before a judge.
On the night she discovered he had died, Aileen says she was getting ready to have dinner with John and his three children. Robert had been due to join them all after his ride.
'I opened the door to the police and said, 'Oh please don't tell me he had an accident'. I never even contemplated the idea that it could be something worse. But then the young lady said, 'Can we come in?' and when she wouldn't tell me why, I knew he was dead.
'All they told me was that he had lost control of his bike. I said there was no way on earth he would have done so.
'This is supposed to be a rich country. I just don't understand why the roads are in such a state – it simply shouldn't be like this.'
The human cost of road disrepair
Motorists have been complaining about the situation for decades, but the problem is now worse than ever.
Between January and November 2024, local authorities in the UK received nearly a million pothole reports – that's 3,122 every day, and the highest number recorded in five years, according to analysis by the pressure group Round Our Way.
Labour has pledged to fix an extra million potholes annually and has given councils an additional £500 million for repairs. But the scale of the crisis remains overwhelming. The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) estimates that fixing every pothole in Britain would require filling one every 18 seconds, around the clock, for the next decade – and critics say the current funding 'doesn't touch the sides'.
They highlight a succession of fatal accidents as proof of a historic lack of action that has left the road network at breaking point.
Earlier this year, a 74-year-old Porsche driver from Reigate was killed after swerving to avoid a large pothole on the A272 Horsham Road near Petworth, West Sussex – one that had already been reported to the council – and crashing into a BMW. The other driver was left with serious injuries.
Cyclists face similar dangers. In 2019, 47-year-old nurse Alison Doyle, a breast cancer survivor, died during a ride on Bold Lane in Lancashire after hitting a pothole and swerving into the path of an oncoming car. 'All I heard was the rattle of a bike and the hiss of a wheel, like someone had a puncture,' recalled her friend Diane Whorton, who was cycling behind. 'I saw Alison losing control and swerving into the other side of the road where there was a car.
'There was nothing she could do. The only thing in the road was a massive pothole, the sort you can't see from a distance. It was the only thing she could have hit.'
Nine years earlier, army officer and Afghanistan veteran Jonathan Allen, 29, was riding a bicycle in the rain on a stretch of the A338 in Wiltshire when he was killed by a lorry after swerving around a pothole.
'It is extraordinary to think that this is a man who had survived two tours in Afghanistan, but who died in Britain because of the state of our roads,' says Edmund King, the president of the Automobile Association (AA) and a prominent campaigner for improved road conditions.
'When we talk to drivers, we find that their biggest issue without doubt is potholes,' he adds.
'They cause significant damage to their vehicles and we deal with over 60,000 breakdowns related to pothole damage a year. For drivers who pay 60 per cent in fuel duty plus VAT, they feel it is fair enough to ask for roads they can use. It feels like a basic right.'
Why Britain's roads are in such poor shape
Countries with cold, wet climates, like Britain, are especially prone to potholes. During heavy rain, water seeps into cracks in the road surface, weakening the soil beneath. In winter, freezing and thawing cycles cause these cracks to expand. Moreover, the high levels of congestion on British roads add extra stress, breaking up the surface and causing asphalt and soil to erode.
And yet, King notes that just the other side of the Channel, in northern France – which also experiences cold winters and high rainfall – the roads are in a very different state. 'I was cycling around the Loire Valley and I didn't come across a single pothole in over a week, it is astonishing,' he says.
The issue, King argues, is the reactive nature of our highway authority. Councils are supposed to address potholes when they reach 40mm deep and 150mm wide, but one in eight local authorities now waits until they've grown to 300mm. Robert Newcombe's accident in Northamptonshire occurred because the pothole he hit wasn't addressed until it had become dangerous. His son John visited the site a week later and noted that the hole was quickly filled in after the crash. However, due to a lack of adequate funding from the Department for Transport, critics warn that such 'patchwork' repairs normally don't last and the same pothole reappears within a year.
'It's extraordinary,' says Duncan Dollimore from the charity Cycling UK. 'The value of the road network is around £400 billion but we're only spending one percent on it, which means we have this valuable asset but no long-term maintenance plan for it – instead all we have is a short-term fix-the-hole approach which means the problem is getting bigger and the roads are getting more dangerous.'
As Dollimore notes, the size of a pothole is not the only factor in determining how dangerous it is – if it is on a bend or on a downhill section of road, it is far more likely to cause injuries or deaths, as people can't see it until it is too late.
A call for accountability and action
While Aileen hopes that publicity surrounding her case will lead to change, life without Robert will never be the same.
'We didn't get him home for 23 days after the accident because the autopsy and coroner's report took so long, and that broke my heart,' she says. When she finally saw Robert's body, she felt some relief. 'He looked just like Bob, the only thing that bothered me was that he didn't have his glasses on so I found them and popped them on.'
Now, she tries to remember him as he was in life – and has framed a picture that she took the day he died, minutes before he left for that fateful ride. 'He looked as happy as I've ever seen him,' she says.
'He loved that bike. He was 14 when he started work and he was 68 when he retired and in the two years before he passed he spent as much time on it as he possibly could.'
As for the lawsuit – Robert's family knows he would be proud of them for taking on the council. 'Whatever my dad did, he did it properly,' says John. 'When he took something on he saw it though; he wanted to protect people and he did what he thought was right and just. In our place, he would have done the same thing. He would have done it no matter what the personal cost.'
Aileen nods along, with tears in her eyes. 'He was my best friend,' she says. 'I met him when I was 17 years old and he made everything right. I was very proud of him and that makes the loss even harder.'