Latest news with #potholes
Motor 1
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Motor 1
GM's New Technology Could Help You Avoid Crappy Roads
Let's face it: America's road infrastructure is less than perfect. Potholes, pockmarks, and defects line hundreds of thousands of miles of pavement across this country. And with so many vehicles driving along these roads each day, deterioration is almost impossible to predict. Almost. General Motors recently filed a patent application for a system aimed at warning drivers of road deterioration before they even see it. GM Authority uncovered details that show GM filed the application initially with the US Patent and Trademark Office on December 15th, 2023, though it wasn't published publicly until June 19th, 2025. It lives under the patent number: US 2025/0200526 A1. GM's system would use sensors and cameras on vehicles, collecting road data such as suspension displacement, wheel rotation, and vibration as they drive. The company would then use those cameras to show road imperfections in real time—like potholes or pooling water—and beam that information up to the cloud via specific telematics and GPS. From there, the system will determine a Road Maintenance Score that reflects the condition of the road in question. Poor enough score? GM could—in theory—send that information to officials for immediate attention. GM's system would also recommend alternate routes to drivers via the in-car navigation system if it detects broken pavement along their path. Though it wasn't specified in the patent, we would expect a system like this to work in perfect tandem with GM's Super Cruise, which will soon have 750,000 miles worth of roadways across the US and Canada already mapped out. It's certainly an interesting idea—and one that could theoretically save drivers thousands of dollars in repair bills, especially given America's below-average road conditions. GM Road Deterioration Patent Filing Photo by: US Patent and Trademark Office GM Road Deterioration Patent Filing Photo by: US Patent and Trademark Office Earlier this year, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America's infrastructure a "C" grade, as reported by Fortune . The ASCE takes things like bridges, dams, and, of course, roads into account when scoring, which happens once every four years. The ASCE's "C" grade is actually an improvement over the previous rating, due in large part to former President Biden's $1-trillion infrastructure deal, which became law in 2021. "We have seen the investments start to pay off, but we still have a lot of work to do out there," noted Darren Olson, chair of the ASCE's report. "By investing in our infrastructure, we're making our economy more efficient, we're making it stronger (and) we're making ourselves globally more competitive." Of course, this road deterioration patent isn't the only thing in GM's arsenal aimed at helping drivers. Last May, GM filed a patent dubbed the 'Vehicle Occupant Mental Wellbeing Assessment and Countermeasure Deployment.' Essentially, a road rage deterrent that would use countermeasures to prevent an 'undesirable situation' while on the road. A separate GM patent filing from 2023 aimed at reducing headlight glare from oncoming vehicles via an augmented-reality, auto-dimming windshield . It should be noted that GM hasn't received patents for these inventions. But we can hope some of this technology makes its way to the road—and eventually improves our lives. More Cool Patents Time Is a Circle: Stellantis Snags Patent for Three-Speed EV Gearbox Ferrari Trademarks Hint at Two New Special Editions Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox, daily. back Sign up For more information, read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . Source: US Patent and Trademark Office via GM Authority Share this Story Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail Got a tip for us? Email: tips@ Join the conversation ( )
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Charley Boorman: Potholes? You should see the ones Ewan and I faced in Kazakhstan
It's no consolation to anyone who's recently suffered a punctured tyre or damaged alloy wheel due to a pothole, but the next time you're cursing the state of Britain's roads, count yourself lucky that you don't live in Kazakhstan. 'We'd been given a police escort out of town,' motorcycle adventurer and TV presenter Charley Boorman recalls. 'They then pulled over to the side of the road and just waved us on. We went on for another mile or so, and then this road that we were on … it was meant to take a day to get across [but] it took us almost two and a half days. It was a dead straight road through the desert that looked like a runway that had been bombed about 20 times, and it was just all over. There were potholes you'd drive into and you would disappear and come out the other end. I mean, it was extraordinary.' So, maybe we Brits shouldn't complain too much? 'Yeah, I think it's pretty good here.' Boorman sat down with us at his home ahead of the airing of a new series for Apple TV+ in which he and his motorcycling compadre, the actor Ewan McGregor, travel on 1970s motorcycles, from McGregor's house near Perth, Scotland, through Europe and Scandinavia, down to Boorman's home in the south of England. • Read more expert reviews, news and insights on cars and motoring Long Way Home follows three earlier series, beginning with with Long Way Round in 2004. That first trip covered 9,000 miles, from London to New York City, via Europe, Asia and America. In 2007, the pair followed it up with Long Way Down, which saw them journey from John o' Groats in Scotland through 18 countries across Europe and Africa, ending in Cape Town in South Africa. They donned their helmets again in 2019 for Long Way Up, which aired the following year. That ride took them from Argentina through South and Central America, finishing in Los Angeles. Boorman, son of the film director John Boorman, met McGregor on the set of The Serpent's Kiss in 1997 and the pair immediately connected over a passion for motorcycles. 'It was my big comeback movie because I was an actor before I did all this. It was Pete Postlethwaite, Greta Scacchi, Richard E Grant, Ewan McGregor … and Charley Boorman. And I was like, you know, 'I'm back'.' While the movie tanked and his acting career didn't take off in the way he had hoped, the experience still changed Boorman's life for ever. 'The film just went straight to DVD but we had a great time, and when I first met Ewan … I went up and said hello to him and said, 'You've got a Moto Guzzi California.' And he went, 'Yeah, I love motorbikes, what have you got?'' The conversation sparked a 30-year friendship as well as a jointly owned, championship-winning National Superstock 1000 racing team (part of British Superbikes support series), countless track days and long weekends away on motorbikes. And then, of course, came the idea to go further — in more than one sense. 'We ended up doing Long Way Round,' Boorman tells me. 'I've got so much to thank Ewan for really because my acting career had gone the wrong way — I'm heavily dyslexic and was really struggling to learn lines. I wasn't enjoying acting any more; it was stressing me out too much. 'I was getting less and less films and I was doing more and more painting and decorating, and doing people's houses up, and that was over a ten-year period. It was really hard to realise that your dream of being an actor and having quite a lot of success was over. So I was coming to terms with being a builder and I felt I'd let my family down, really, because I wasn't doing what I said I would do. It was quite a difficult time.' Then came a call from McGregor — he'd had a brainwave. 'I went round to his house, and he had this big map out and said, 'Look, I think we should do this.' And I was like, 'OK'.' Boorman didn't have the financial means to drop his work and leave his family for four and a half months, though, so came to an arrangement with his colleagues on the newly formed Long Way production team (which includes film-makers David Alexanian and Russ Malkin). 'I had five grand in the bank — that's all I had to my name,' Boorman explains. 'I had to make a deal with Russ and Dave and Ewan that I would get a weekly salary, because we didn't have enough money to pay ourselves.' A book deal helped to finance the trip itself. 'After that, I didn't have anything to lose by going.' '[It all came about] because of Ewan's generosity,' Boorman is at pains to point out. 'He's a very kind and generous, nice person, you know — very caring. And I think he realised that…' Boorman's sentence tails off, though the suggestion is that McGregor had spotted his friend was struggling in more ways than one. After Long Way Round, Boorman fulfilled a lifelong dream of entering the gruelling Dakar Rally, creating a show about the experience called Race to Dakar. He also made documentaries about motorbike trips from England to Sydney, then Sydney to Tokyo, and another charting a journey that took in the four extremities of Canada. Building on these adventures, Long Way Home was conceived as a stark contrast to McGregor and Boorman's previous trip. Long Way Up was a tricky one to organise and shoot, Boorman says — not only as it involved filming in foreign countries but also because he and McGregor chose to use electric motorcycles: a pair of Harley Davidson LiveWires. 'That was a real challenge,' he tells me. 'There are no fast chargers in South America, Central America or Mexico, and it was only the last four or five days [in the US] that we had access to them. So it was very complicated. And although it was amazing fun, we lost a little bit of freedom in the fact that we couldn't just stop and camp on the side of the road like we had done in the last two, Long Way Round and Long Way Down, and because you always had to plug in [overnight] as there were no fast chargers. It was a little limiting for that.' Europe and Scandinavia would have been much better suited to electric vehicles, thanks to a more mature charging infrastructure (Norway, in particular, is considered the EV capital of the world, with about 10,000 rapid chargers and almost 90 per cent of new car sales in 2024 being fully electric). But for Long Way Home, McGregor and Boorman returned to combustion bikes to avoid any need for compromise. It also adds an extra element of jeopardy, in terms of the potential for breakdowns — especially as the bikes chosen are about 50 years old. 'When you ride these old bikes, you only have an 85 per cent chance of finishing the day,' Boorman says. 'So they come with their problems.' The main reason for choosing them, though, was that McGregor wanted to stretch the legs of one of the favourites in his collection: a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado police bike. 'Ewan's owned it for about 10 or 12 years, and he loves her. She's a gorgeous, gorgeous thing.' Boorman had to find something of similar vintage, settling on a 1973 BMW R75/5. 'I was looking at Ducatis,' Boorman says, 'but a lot of Ducatis in those days were quite sporty bikes and around the mid-Seventies, they had real reliability issues. So I wasn't sure what to do.' A German brand might prove more reliable, he thought, before spotting a BMW R75 that had been customised by a specialist for someone else. 'It was really nice because the whole front part up to the petrol tank is all original, and then the back he kind of modernised and made it like a café racer. Kind of a retro look — and I really liked the look of it.' Boorman convinced the owner to sell it to him, and then resprayed it from the original blue to his trademark burnt orange. 'I've got a quite a thing about orange bikes,' Boorman explains, and that's clear from a glance around his garage — the collection of bikes includes those from the TV shows, including the orange-hued Livewire used in series three. There's also a BMW used during his entry into the 2006 Dakar, which ended prematurely after he crashed and broke bones in one of his hands. Boorman has had a number of accidents on motorbikes, including one in 2016 during which he was clipped by a car, hit a wall and 'destroyed' both legs. But that was a small crash compared with what happened next. 'In 2018, I finally got over that [first crash]. I had cages around my leg and metal everywhere, but I had just got back to riding properly — not walking properly, but riding — and I had a much, much worse one. I just woke up in a hospital in Bloemfontein, in South Africa. I'd snapped my forearm — bent completely backwards, all the bones had come out. I broke my pelvis. I crushed my left side; broke all the ribs, collapsed lung. Head injury, brain swell, brain bleed, massive concussion.' Boorman says he doesn't remember the collision itself, only waking up 24 hours later in hospital. According to another account he has given, he has vague recollections of being transported to the hospital in the back of a pick-up truck, pleading with the driver to pull over because of the intense pain. 'That brought the number of operations up to 34 or 35. It has only been since the beginning of last year, 2024, when I started this trip with Ewan, that I've been able to walk properly. There's been a lot of pain.' Isn't it difficult to get back on the bike after such devastating accidents? 'It was pretty easy actually,' Boorman says. 'The motorcycles were the thing that kept me going — that at some point I'll be able to get back on a motorbike. 'I think if you ask people who ride horses, or ride motorcycles or bicycles or mountain bikes, or climb mountains — serious people who do it — a lot have probably had serious injuries, and all of them get back on. I don't know why; it just seems like the right thing to do. 'People talk about mental health, and about living in the present — not thinking about the past or, or wishing you were somewhere else or what's going to happen in the future. You get on your bike and you can only really think about what's going on at that moment. [It's about] those bits of decompression. 'If you've had a terrible day at work and you've got a 30-minute commute, by the time you get home, you feel great because everything's forgotten. [If] you drive home in the car, you're still working on the telephone, you're listening to the radio, you've got somebody sitting beside you … you're distracted. You're not given that chance. And then you get out the car and you're walking up to the house and you're still talking on the phone and kids come and say hello. And you're going, 'Shh, I'm on the phone,' when you shouldn't be. 'Ewan says it a lot. It really does help your mind, you know. It's mindfulness. Ever since I was six years old, I'd been doing mindfulness without realising. And I'll probably hopefully carry on right up to the end.' That's great for his mental health, I venture, but what does Boorman's wife think about it? Is there a conflict between self-care and ensuring that the ones you love aren't forced to suffer? He pauses. 'The first crash was very difficult,' he admits. 'Because it was both legs. It's very debilitating and it's a complete change of life. There was a moment where I could have lost my leg. There was a real moment whether or not we could have kept it. And so she had to go through all of that. And then, to go through another one … you know, she was more pissed off and angry about the second one! She goes, 'If I have to go down to f***ing get you again, I'm going to f***ing…' 'And fair enough, you know. She's not wanting to, but has to pick up the pieces. And then I go off again. 'But she's not that bothered. If I spend too much time at home, I see that there's a suitcase sitting by the front door. 'Time to go now, Charley.'' Which suggests that, even in their mid- to late-fifties, Long Way Home is unlikely to mark the end of McGregor and Boorman's motorcycling adventures. Is another series in the works already? 'I don't know,' Boorman tells me. 'I think, like everyone, we get close to the end [of one journey] and we start to talk about another one, because you don't want to let the one that you're on end. So, yes, we have spoken about it — but who knows?' Long Way Home is available globally on Apple TV+
BBC News
5 days ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Kent County Council needs funds to fix potholes
A council representative has said the authority has contractors ready to fix Kent's potholes, but not sufficient funding to do so.A report found that the backlog of repairs to "pothole-plagued" roads in the south east of England was £ a hot seat interview on BBC Radio Kent, Toby Howe, highways and transportation strategic resilience manager at Kent County Council (KCC), said the state of the roads in the county had declined due to a lack of government Department for Transport said councils across England will receive a total of £1.6bn to fix roads and fill potholes to "start to reverse a decade of decline on our roads". Mr Howe, who previously worked as a highway maintenance engineer, said adequate government funding used to allow the council to resurface roads at a reasonable rate."Over the years, through many governments, there has been funding cut, cut, cut," he said. "And the state of the countries roads have all fallen in that time."Kent is not alone. Every county you go through has the same problem. And it is the severe lack of funding." 'Ready to go' Nearly half of the region's road network – more than 13,000 miles – has less than 15 years' structural life remaining, according to the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey, produced by the Asphalt Industry Howe added: "If we could have an awful lot of money, we've got companies out there, ready to go."We could do what we'd actually really like to do. And that is a strategic asset approach where you get the roads fit for purpose before they are ready to fail."In May, Reform UK took control of KCC, wiping out the Conservative majority after nearly 30 Howe said it was "too early to tell" if the change in leadership would lead to major changes."They've got some great ideas. And they have said potholes are their priority, which is brilliant from our point of view," he Secretary Heidi Alexander said potholes had "plagued motorists for far too long"."This government is firmly on the side of drivers. Every area of England will get extra cash to tackle this problem once and for all."
BBC News
6 days ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Shropshire team aims to repair potholes permanently
Getting to grips with the huge amount of potholes in the county is one of Shropshire Council's key council leader Heather Kidd made improving the state of Shropshire's roads one of her top priorities within the first 100 days in are 3,200 miles of roads in Shropshire, ranging from main A and B to smaller C and unclassified of the ways the authority aims to "get things moving" quicker is by using Multihog road planer machines for more complex jobs. The machines can plane off the road surface much quicker than having to saw-cut and break out the defective surface by hand."We've got two Multihog teams who will do 130 square metres of repair in a day," said Josh Sweeney, director of marketing at Multevo, which is contracted by Shropshire Council to carry out highways maintenance. "They are used on roads that are deteriorating and need that extra level of resource - we're responsible for permanently repairing any defect," he said."If we're going to make a visit to a location, we want to make sure that every defect is picked up and repaired permanently so we're not going back at a later date."Mr Sweeney said last week, the team had reduced the number of reported defects by 330."We look after everything from surveying the road and identifying the right treatment through to programming the works, raising permits, and making residents aware that work will be happening," he said."Some of the machines are multi-purpose so can be used in additional activities. "It's becoming more of a regular scenario where we've used the same machines to help with floods – pump water away in the night, then road repairs in the day." Forthcoming Multihog works Pentregear Issa to Croesan Bach - 16 to 17 JulyLlansaintfraid Road - 18 JulyB4397, Burlton to Loppington - 21 to 30 JulyNewport Road, Albrighton - 24 JulyAsh Road, Whitchurch - 24 to 30 JulyAll work will be carried out between 09:30 to 16:00 BST on news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations. Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
6 days ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Resurfacing work set for major Wolverhampton route
Resurfacing work is set to be carried out on Cannock Road in Wolverhampton as a crackdown on improving roads and removing potholes continues, the council 24 July, work will take place at night from 19:00 until 05:00 BST to minimise traffic first section, from the Stafford Street junction to Nine Elms, is expected to be finished by 8 August, weather permitting, the council Park Lane junction of the road will be resurfaced and have new lines painted from 11 to 15 August. The scheme follows improvements made to roads across the city in recent weeks, the council said, adding that it had made a commitment to repair more than 7,500 potholes this year."We know Cannock Road needs resurfacing and that work will be taking place soon giving this main route into the city a much-needed facelift," councillor Qaiser Azeem, cabinet member for transport, said."Fixing roads and tackling potholes is a priority for the council and we have a programme of work being put into action."He added: "The Local Government Association estimated the backlog of road repairs stands at about £17bn [nationally] and could take more than a decade to fix."In Wolverhampton we are following a data-led, informed strategy to identify where improvements can have the greatest impact, reducing the need for urgent repairs on our roads in the long run."The council said it was responsible for maintaining 480 miles of roads and nearly 800 miles of maintenance is funded through the council's £9.7m capital programme for 2025/26 and received an extra £2m in funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) to help fix more potholes, the authority said. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
