Do you know where all/most of the potholes and manholes are on your daily commuting route? Do you -safely- try to avoid them, or are they just part of the drive? Do you avoid driving over manholes that *surprise *you in the street? I realize that can’t always be accomplished due to traffic patterns and lane markings, but what about when it’s safe to do so?
I’m pretty-tuned in and looking for them all the time, and some of them are now mentally “pre-programmed” into my route. One example: There is a spot near the new shopping center where there are a lot of manholes in the street. They’ve sunken into the pavement and create quite a bump if you hit `em, so I do what I can to avoid them. To straddle the craters I need to be at the far right of the lane when going through intersection #1 and then slowly drift to the left side of the lane as approaching and clearing the next intersection to ensure my straddling is successful (staying within my lane, of course).
There’s also an extra-large-pizza-sized layer of asphalt coming off the leftmost lane in one section of I-440 and it’s almost exactly at the crest of a slight hill. Point is; you can’t really see it until you get prohibitively close to do anything about it. In this case I’ll use the exit sign on the right side of the road to warn/remind me that the bump is coming up and give me time to reposition.
I’m curious; what is your level of consideration or awareness of pavement maladies?
When riding my bicycle, I avoid them especially in the rain. They can be very slick plus they often aren’t level with the road. If you think the bump is bad in a car, try them on a bicycle.
Always try to avoid them as I prescribe to the realization that they do not heal with time; they only get worst. I’ve had enough tire damage to my sidewalls to confirm this observation.
Most are ignorable/bumps in the road. However, the heavy street maintenance that is done everywhere and frantically from about May-September up here in the northeast means you frequently drive down a street that has been milled, meaning manholes and the like are 1-4 inch protrusions from the road surface. They are not always good about judging when these anti-tank defenses need to be flagged or diverted around. I drove over one without seeing it - seeing how high and sharp it was - and fortunately was in my Odyssey, which has decent ground clearance. In two other cars, especially my summer car, I would have ripped something out of the underside.
Other than that I don’t have too much trouble with them, but I’ve learned to drive streets that are even nominally under construction with a very sharp eye.
There is one on 8 mile that is about 5 inches below the surface of the road, and really makes a huge thump if you don’t swerve to avoid it. Mostly though I just don’t care.
Like the OP, I have learned the roads I drive frequently. I drive to avoid the really bad potholes, ruts, manhole covers, and railroad tracks.
I once got stopped for drunk driving because of my weaving to avoid these tire killers. The judge threw out the ticket for “improper lane usage”. It seems that he uses some of the same roads that I do. He also swerves to save wear and tear on his cars. He thought that my use of the entire lane to save my tires was proper use of the lane.
JFYI, on the DUI stop, I do not drink, so no worries there.
Michigan has some of the worst roads in the country and this last winter was brutal. It was bad enough that MDOT issued a news release advising people of the safest way to drive over a pothole.By spring, it was truly impossible to completely avoid potholes and severely rutted roads. It was commonplace and expected to see other drivers swerve back and forth to avoid them and I drove accordingly, and slowly. I definitely do my best to avoid them.
This is related to why I’ve been pondering the question. I’ve noticed that other drivers I ride with may be quite attentive, but manholes just don’t meet their minimum significance criteria. Couple that with the small amount of replies in this thread, and that observation seems to be true of the majority of drivers.
My heightened sense of manholes probably comes from avoiding them (and most any surface anomaly) on my motorcycle for more than 25 years. Sure, experience has shown that most manholes are just a minor imperfection, but I’ve also hit a few that surprised me as to how deep they are.
I have wondered about this scenario, so thanks for sharing the story.
There are a few manholes on my regular routes that have asphalt missing from one quadrant, making a pothole that needs to be avoided. It’s only a few, though, so I don’t need to swerve so much as slide over ahead of time.
Recently the intersection where one of them is located got an overlay and it was fixed. Now I notice not having to avoid it a lot more than I used to notice avoiding it. It had become second nature and now it’s - - gone.