'Atrocious': Frustrated locals take drastic action against potholes
08/01/2024 04:00 PM
Fed-up residents are taking matters into their own hands to urge authorities to fix the rising number of potholes on Australian roads.
Frustrated residents around Australia have begun spray-painting roads and using unconventional methods to alert motorists to potentially hazardous potholes, in lieu of local government action.
Donovan Ferguson, a resident of Kinglake – a suburb approximately 56km north-east of Melbourne – started spray-painting pothole warnings across Victorian roads to warn other drivers of the pesky road hazard.
Related: Who is liable for damage caused by potholes?
When speaking to 9 News Australia, Ferguson said he’d witnessed the real-life effects of potholes and decided to take action. "We see distressed people on the side of the road, they've had a terrible shock,” he said of the road hazard.
He’s not the only person who has resorted to drastic measures to convince road authorities to address potholes across Australian roads.
In March 2024, a Facebook post went viral online after an anonymous man spray-painted warning signs ahead of incoming potholes along the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory.
The Travelling Jackeroo – the blogger who posted the viral images – allegedly witnessed a truck hit the "foot deep" pothole at fast speeds, causing the driver's steer to become "airborne".
The Facebook post attracted a range of comments from people sharing their frustrations over the lack of road repairs around the country.
"Roads are in horrendous condition with NO SIGNS until someone gets hurt or worse. Almost lost a friend to unmarked road damage… the road had been in disrepair for months," one commenter wrote.
"My son is a truck driver up there and he just told me the road is atrocious from the QLD border to Darwin… good on that little legend that marked the road with signs to pre-warn drivers of the hazards on the road," another remarked.
In a recent survey of 7000 Victorians conducted by the Royal Automotive Club of Victoria (RACV), "potholes and poor road conditions" were identified as the "primary safety issue" with 64 per cent of respondents – up from 46 per cent in 2021 – highlighting it as the biggest issue for regional Victorian roads.
Danny O’Brien, Victoria’s Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety, has slammed the state government for prioritising funding for big city builds over fixing local roads.
“We’ve got over $40 billion being wasted on big build cost overruns while the rest of us in Victoria are driving around on goat tracks,” Minister O’Brien told 9 News Australia.
It's a similar story in New South Wales, with the NRMA receiving more than 12,000 roadside assistance calls for tyre and wheel damage caused by potholes in the state from April to May 2024 alone.
Who’s responsible for potholes?
Pothole liability can be a murky area. Depending on where the pothole is located, the responsibility could fall under three various road authorities: local councils, state governments or private companies.
According to Councillor Linda Scott, the President of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA), despite local councils managing approximately 75 per cent of Australia's road network, there's not enough federal funding given to local authorities to fix roads in their municipalities.
"Australian councils manage almost 680,000km of local roads while collecting less than four per cent of taxation. Local roads are a critical part of our national road network, so we need an urgent national funding solution," Scott previously said in a media statement.
A November 2023 report conducted by the Grattan Institute – a public policy research organisation – recommended that $1 billion in federal funding is needed to fix local council roads across the country.
On private roads like tollways, potholes aren't as common due to a higher frequency of maintenance work conducted across vital arterials in Australia.
Major toll road operator Transurban previously told Drive it "performs proactive maintenance on our roads, so surface damage is incredibly rare”.
Due to most state or territory legislation, governments aren't held liable for car damage that occurs as a result of potholes on state-controlled roads.
Payouts for pothole damage on state roads are also something of a grey area. This is because it depends on whether the state or territory government was aware of the pothole’s existence, and whether the road authority did its due diligence under its road management or Civil Liability Act.
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