K so this happened last night before I went out, but im more pissed off now.

 

Usually go out for a cycle of an evening. My bike is a road bike and so, I ride it on the road, couldnt ride it on the paths anyway it would die!

 

Made it 5 miles across swindon, it was a little wet and puddles eveywhere. I was cycling around 25mph (as the speedo indicated). I usually cycle around 2 foot out from the kerb / ditch when out of town etc because of pot holes etc that usually form close to the kerb and could kill my bike! Anyway, going up hill cars behined me so I pedal faster, as I push down and give it some welley 'BANG', back wheel slips sideways into a pot hole about 2 feet out from the kerb, back wheel caught the edge and went into it, nearly came a cropper but managed to stay on and stop.

 

Back wheel was ****ed! two spokes split out, tyre split, inner tube burst, the edge of my back rim bent and split, and to top it off the shock sent my back light flying off and shattered in the road :(

 

So here I am a good few miles from home and left on the side of the road. I collected the remains and began my walk home with the bike.

 

Thing is in a car you dont notice it as much, but beleive me the amount of pot holes and cracks in the roads are ****ing silly. There is one the end of my road that has grown to about a good half of a meter in diameter and has to be about three inches deep or more, but as its a dead end it never gets sorted.

 

So it pisses me off, what do we pay our road tax for FFS, I pay it on both my cars and the missus, and for what? all the roads around here are shit, all they spend it on in swindon is ripping up the road to put more stupid fooking roundabout where they are not needed, then a few months later rip up the roundabout and change it to lights, to then later put a ****ing roundabout in tossers :xxx: :xxx:

 

Anyway pissed off more than ever as i cant get the wheel fixed, my local bike guy who is a top bloke said the wheel is ****ed. Cant re do the spokes, cant file down the ding and straighten the wheel out as its totally killed the rim in about five places because of the impact :( good rims too;

 

 

Oh well here goes another 200 cause of the council (lucky i didnt have the Campagnolo's I was going to buy a few months back!!!), going to lodge a complaint on monday tho recon they will do anything? was going to say I come off because of it too?

Apparently you can claim compensation off of the council but you need to collect proof of the pothole, measure it, take pictures and stuff like that. I'm sure there's some sort of way of going about it. I had two alloys and a tyre taken out because of a pothole myself. Really pissed off because I wasnt going any more then 25MPH when I hit some huge massive hole, it was so bad that it made my MP3 CD Player skip and I've never had that before in the 2 years I've had the thing!

 

It does make us question why in god names sake that we pay so much tax just to drive our cars and yet we have such shitty crappy road. Freak'in goverments just wants to tax us out of our cars!

You can claim, my mate got a new set of alloys after the council coughed up.

As I understand you guys pay around £150 a year tax regardless of engine size (apologies if im incorrect) . But having driven in the UK a good few times over the last few years , I have to say you're road structure and quality is first class.

 

My 15 mile drive to work every day is basically a minefield.

I know all the potholes and avoid them, sometimes veering too close to cars coming in the other direction. Nothing changes here in Ireland, they fill a few now and then with stuff, but as soon as it rains they're big craters again.

 

The sickener in this is that i have to pay 1200 euro (around £850) a year road tax for the privilage. :headvswal :headvswal :headvswal

 

The Irish government have recieved billions from the E.U. for road restructuring, and done nothing to improve it. Sorry to hijack your thread Stevo but you've given me a chance to vent some frustration.

Road tax is a complete joke. Claim it back against the robbing councils tossers.

 

I couldn't be arsd to switch to a ****er icon .. but if I could it would be here now.

As I understand you guys pay around £150 a year tax regardless of engine size (apologies if im incorrect) . But having driven in the UK a good few times over the last few years , I have to say you're road structure and quality is first class.

 

My 15 mile drive to work every day is basically a minefield.

I know all the potholes and avoid them, sometimes veering too close to cars coming in the other direction. Nothing changes here in Ireland, they fill a few now and then with stuff, but as soon as it rains they're big craters again.

 

The sickener in this is that i have to pay 1200 euro (around £850) a year road tax for the privilage. :headvswal :headvswal :headvswal

 

The Irish government have recieved billions from the E.U. for road restructuring, and done nothing to improve it. Sorry to hijack your thread Stevo but you've given me a chance to vent some frustration.

 

850 a year???? fookin hell i thought we had it bad?

Road tax is a complete joke. Claim it back against the robbing councils tossers.

 

I couldn't be arsd to switch to a ****er icon .. but if I could it would be here now.

 

Going to try and get some cash dont know if it will work or not mate but they sure are :xxx:

850 a year???? fookin hell i thought we had it bad?

 

 

And precisely the reason i havnt changed to irish plates yet.

 

did this with my last z and immediately had the law on my back. This time i'm going to leave it for a few months till i've got a few mechanical probs sorted.

 

I cruise through checkpoints at the moment as they still think im on holidays, lol.

 

Usually go out for a cycle of an evening. My bike is a road bike and so, I ride it on the road, couldnt ride it on the paths anyway it would die!

 

Steve, thats why I ride one of these babies!! 5 inches of plush travel, mmmm! :dance: [/img] [/img]

WTF do we pay road tax for?

 

Read somewhere that only about 25% of road tax actually gos back into the upkeep of roads ect. the rest just goes anywhere the Gov want it to. :xxx:

Steve, thats why I ride one of these babies!! 5 inches of plush travel, mmmm! :dance: [/img] [/img]

 

He he nice mate, I just need the road one to get up some good speeds. I used to have a full suspension set up but sapped too much power when building good speed i found.

 

Do love mountin biking too tho, my last ones dead atm, jumped down about 20 steps in it and completly killed the rear rim :S it was only a cheap one mind.

Know exactly what you mean mate! Mines a bl00dy nightmare on the roads. Got a Fox ProPedal shock whish damps out some of the bob induced by pedaling but not enough! Had a road bike but it got nicked ARRGHH! :headvswal