Who?

[TWR]

Is to blame for the damage to the Motorway / & all other roads?

[TWR]

There are umpteen deep grooves in our local Motorway stretch from HGV punctures which have been there for years.

My vote is for badly-maintained HGVs.

The cause of the Groves is not caused by HGV Blow out's Methyl, that's caused by the Continuas use of the HGV in that lane, blow out are caused by overheating of the tyres & more often are caused by what driver call " Bandag specials" in other words, "Crap cheap tyres) Pot hols used to be dig out & done propely, now its the case of the wheel barrow men a shovel and a plodder to stamp the tarmac down, money saving that's not working.

[BRIGHT SPARK]

TWR..a 44 ton HGV pays £1850 VED this equates to £42 per ton.......I pay £490 for less than 2 tons, this equates to more than £245 per ton.
According to VOSA the VED on HGV's covers around 36% of the damage they create ...this takes into consideration fuel duty.Have you looked on the London Stock Exchange recently to see how well run Haulage/logistics companies are doing off the back of the taxpayer.

[ummmm]

Wheel barrow men just plug a pothole until it can be done properly.

[sunny-dave]

It's the HGVs which are smashing the roads to pieces - and not paying anything like their fair share of the cost of providing/maintaining the road system. All HGVs (whether UK or foreign) should pay a properly calculated VED which reflects their damage to the road network. Actually perhaps a 'per mile' usage tax, which corresponds to their axle weight, would be better.

Either way the maths is frightening :

Road damage rises as the square of axle weight - a car has an axle weight of about half a ton, a 44 ton HGV has an axle weight of up to 10 tons.

This means that if a maximum size HGV was paying the same economic cost for the use of the road as a car, it would pay well around 400x the VED

Average road tax for a car (say) £150 - so the proper cost for a juggernaut HGV should be well over £60,000 - but they pay around £1,800 .... so ... take the monsters off the road until they pay their proper share of the costs.

Whilst we are at it, we could also perhaps address the economic costs of the abysmal standard of HGV driving and the danger and inconvenience caused to other road users by tailgating and 'elephant racing'. Perhaps a government minister should get out of their blue-lighted limo and spend a day driving him/herself back and forward along the length of the A14 to see just how dangerous and anti-social the average HGV driver is ...

[BRIGHT SPARK]

TWR..........we're all waiting :-)

[TWR]

Can you get a pallet of food in the back of your car Sunny?

take the monsters off the road until they pay their proper share of the costs

Can you carry a Load of bricks / cement / Timber / Fridges / Take sense.

[TWR]

For you as well Bright, same as Sunny.


BRIGHT SPARK Mark as Best Answer
TWR..........we're all waiting :-)

[BRIGHT SPARK]

No I cant get a load of bricks in the back of my car .....but still have to pay to subsidize the likes of the Stobart Group.

[sunny-dave]

Quite so - the costs should fall where they are incurred - if it puts up the price of consumer goods by a tiny margin, then that is correct economics.

A forced cross-subsidy by all other road users to HGVs is wrong.

[Spoonboy]

Wear and tear.

[Baldric]

///The cause of the Groves is not caused by HGV Blow out's///
(I assume you mean groOves)

Oh yes it is, it's caused by the wheel rim dragging along the road surface
after the blown tyre has departed for pastures new!

[TWR]

Does that mean the likes of the M6 has about 30 miles of Grooves that was caused by a silly HGV Driver running on a Flat Baldric? Give over.

[Dodger666]

"Wheel barrow men just plug a pothole until it can be done properly".

In our area the wheelbarrow brigade repair a pothole and when it needs repairing again they do it again. They never get repaired properly.

[ummmm]

That's down to the council. The person who plugs the hole is almost certainly a council employee. The ones who do it correctly are contractors so it comes down to how much cash the council have spare.

More roads will be fixed towards the end of the tax year as councils use up their budgets.

[Baldric]

More than likely ^^^ TWR!