Potholes are the bane of a driver’s existence, causing billions of dollars of damage every year. Here’s how they’re formed and what makes them so dangerous.
Potholes are a major road problem that automakers including Tesla are trying to solve. They’re particularly bad if your car happens to hit one. The word « pothole » is based on « pot », which is a 14th-Century English word for a deep hole. It came to describe our road-based potholes during the early 20th Century.
There are three elements that must be present for potholes to form in a road — these are cracks in the road surface, water to seep into the cracks, and traffic to accelerate the process. The actual process of pothole formation has five stages, the first of which is the road surface cracking, due to the road’s inability to support the amount of traffic on it, resulting in flexing of the pavement and cracks forming. This can be accelerated by factors like asphalt that is old, insufficient drainage, and road repairs made by utilities that don’t meet proper standards.
