'The roads are literally falling apart on us...' Caithness driving instructors set out their concerns
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Caithness driving instructors have revealed how potholes are having a serious impact on their work, with one calling it "soul-destroying" and another declaring: “The roads are literally falling apart on us.”
The owners of three local driving schools spoke out in support of campaign group Caithness Roads Recovery and warned of the additional stress being placed on learner drivers.
In a couple of cases, instructors highlighted damage that had been caused to their vehicles while bumping along on the county's crumbling carriageways.
“We're trying to teach them a safe way to drive – but we haven't got safe roads to drive on," said Adam Hendry, who has run Wick-based Adam's Driving School for 14 years.
“It was never a problem before but now it has become a problem. There are sections of road now where you've got to remember where the pothole is so you can actually tell your pupil where it is so they can miss it – otherwise it's just going to break my car.
“We're on the road usually every day, so our cars are at risk all the time. You really have to have a good memory of where the potholes are to tell your pupil when they're coming along to say 'keep over to the left', 'keep over to the right' or simply 'slow down'.
“It might not just be one pothole, it might be a whole series.
“It might be only a couple of hundred yards, but it's that whole couple of hundred yards that you've really got to slow down for.
“You can teach somebody a safe way of driving and they can hit a pothole and have an accident through no fault of their own.”
Mr Hendry said he was fully supportive of Caithness Roads Recovery's campaign for investment in local roads.
“Since they got in touch with me I've been fully behind them and what they're trying to do," he said. "It's not just one area of Caithness – you can go Caithness-wide and find the same problems.
“The roads are literally falling apart on us.”
Nicola Mowat has 34 years' experience as a driving instructor at Thurso-based Nicola Mowat Driver Training. She said the state of the roads had made her consider giving up.
“It has just got steadily worse and worse the last few years," Mrs Mowat said. “When lockdown happened, I got another job with the NHS and I considered not going back to driving lessons and my main reason for that was the state of the roads.
“I'm just back part-time now, I'm still at the NHS – but, as I say, that was the main reason I didn't want to go back – it's just soul-destroying, the roads.
“I had a broken spring on my car and just got it fixed last weekend.
“It's bad enough driving yourself, trying to miss all the potholes, but trying to get a pupil to do it... It's hard enough for them to learn to drive anyway without having constantly to say to them, 'Oh, watch that pothole, watch this bit.' It's not fair on them.
“I avoid certain junctions as much as I can because of the state of the roads.
“Turning into Towerhill Road in Thurso, it's that bad that you avoid it even though it's a test route. You know you've got to teach it, but you don't teach it as much as you should be teaching it because you'd have no car left.
“You should be teaching them to look well ahead, and look for hazards ahead, but you know fine that they're getting stressed because they're looking for potholes. But they shouldn't be having to look for potholes, because the road should be drivable – and it's not.
“You can't expect the roads to be perfect but you want them to be drivable, that's the thing. You can't afford to keep putting new springs on your car.”
She added: “I am delighted with what Iain Gregory and Helen Campbell are doing.”
Gary Sinclair, of Wick-based Gary’s Driving School, estimated that only about 10 per cent of road surfaces need to be fixed.
“The roads that we use within a four or five-mile radius of Wick, 90 per cent of those roads are okay. It just seems to be a cluster of roads that are in a bad state of repair," he said.
“I've been a driving instructor for four years. In the first three years of me being a driving instructor I wouldn't really need to discuss the road surface as such.
“You do have to let the learners know the dangers on the road – whether it's pedestrians, motorcyclists, cars, buses, lorries. You need to make them aware of the dangers of the other road users, and you need to make them aware of the conditions of the roads that they're going to be training on – whether it's dry, whether it's wet, whether it's icy.
“But certainly the road surface is now coming into our lessons a lot as well, because of the potholes. And that's something that we didn't really have to discuss three years ago when I started.
“One of the things I'm trying to explain to the learners is that although potholes are hard on the cars, sometimes it's not necessarily the pothole that is the problem, it's the speed that they've come onto it.
"Sometimes you just can't avoid the pothole. If there's traffic coming towards you, you can't avoid it – you've just got to adjust your speed and go through the pothole at a speed that's not being hard on the car.”
Mr Sinclair explained that one of his pupils had hit a pothole at the top of Newton Hill during a driving test while going no faster than 25 mph. As a result, a new wishbone had to be fitted on the vehicle.
“A wishbone on a three-year-old car should be unheard of," Mr Sinclair said. I know it's a driving instructor's car and it is going to get wear and tear above the ordinary car, but a wishbone shouldn't be going out of a car – not at three years old. And that's solely because of the state of the roads.
“It's certainly becoming a problem. It's okay in the daylight just now because you're seeing the potholes but we're going to lose that daylight shortly and that's going to be a bigger problem.
“I don't like to be too hard on the council because the majority of the roads are fine – it just seems to be a cluster of bad bits.”
Caithness Roads Recovery co-founders Iain Gregory and Helen Campbell met Mr Hendry and Mr Sinclair on a recent Sunday to look at some of the worst-affected sections in and around Wick.
Mr Sinclair said: “Some of the other driving instructors were away that weekend or they would have been there as well.”
He added: “It's not until you see the photographs and you actually stop beside the potholes that you realise how bad they actually are.”
Mr Gregory said: "We are very grateful to Adam and Gary for sharing their experiences with us. As the holder of a Scottish Police Class One Advanced Motor Driving Certificate, I completely agree with the very valid concerns raised by these experienced professionals.
"The area around Newton Hill in particular is utterly disgraceful and it defeats me that the Highland Council still trots out the line that the law 'does not state that roads are to be kept entirely free of defects'. One wonders if we occupy different planets."
Mrs Campbell said: “It's very sad to hear how driving schools and learner drivers are also suffering from the continuing appalling state of our roads. We are seeing one or two more robust repairs, but they are very few and far between and we need much, much more done to make our roads safe again.
"Our campaign is about highlighting how badly our roads are affecting people living in Caithness and we are desperate for a return to more normal living.
"We don’t care about how we got to this point. What we care about is someone taking ownership now and producing an emergency plan on how our roads will be properly funded and recovered, and by when.”
