MONSTER potholes on two of the UK’s busiest motorways wiped out over sixty cars in just days.
Experts have slammed the “unheard of” scenes which saw scores of vehicles damaged on stretches of motorway in England.
On September 27, a “massive” pothole damaged 20 cars on the M4 as motorists lined up their crippled vehicles on the hard shoulder.
Photos from the scene of showed a long queue of damaged vehicles lined up on the busy motorway.
A company CEO, who remained anonymous, blew two tyres of his £49,000 Mercedes EQA, which can cost around £320 each to replace.
Just five days later, another pothole on the M25 wiped out almost 60 vehicles leaving drivers stranded for hours on Britain’s busiest motorway.
A local tyre company said 58 cars had been damaged as they lined up on the hard shoulder between junctions 12 and 13.
Alloy wheels were cracked and tyres punctured, with some drivers reportedly forking out £700 to repair their mangled motors.
Lorry driver Blaine Conway, 39, said he heard a “big bang” as he hit the crater on the ring road, forcing him to pull over.
He told The Sun: “I was leaving work around half five, and I was on the M25 southbound between junction 13 and 12.
“It was very dark and it was raining. All of a sudden I heard a big bang and I knew something was wrong.
“I parked up on the hard shoulder where I saw two or three other cars. At one point there were 27 cars parked on the side of the road.”
Blaine thought to himself “that’s going to cost me money.”
He added: “I had one tyre damaged but many people had two tyres ruined.
“Many people also did not have a spare tyre, and I didn’t either.”
After refusing the cost of having a spare tyre brought to him, Blaine walked four miles to the nearest tyre shop to get a replacement.
The horrendous scenes have been described by AA president Edmund King as “unheard of” as he told the MailOnline it was “lucky nobody was hurt.”
He said: “One massive motorway pothole taking out twenty cars and creating total carnage is bad enough, but two motorway incidents in the space of a few days is unheard of.”
National Highways said that it was alerted to the M25 pothole around 6am and a repair team arrived within an hour.
The road was open again within three hours.
The agency has not confirmed any compensation but does allow drivers to make “red claims” if their vehicle is damaged or they are injured on one of its roads.
A MOTORIST who ruined their car after hitting a monster pothole was paid £46,000 by the council after complaining.
Nearly 1,000 drivers made successful pothole damage claims against Stoke-on-Trent City Council over the past four years.
A total of 1,308 compensation claims relating to vehicle damage caused by potholes on Stoke-on-Trent’s roads were made against the city council between 2020 and 2024, of which 978 were successful.
The council has had to pay out £371,914 in compensation over the four years, according to figures released following a Freedom of Information request.
The single biggest compensation award over the period was £45,915 paid out to one motorist in 2021/22.
And the number of successful claims more than doubled from 171 in 2023/24 to 403 in 2023/24, indicating that the problem is getting worse.
Its website states: “We aim to protect the public purse by only settling claims against the company where there is a clear liability.
“However, there is no automatic right to compensation or damages.
“The law makes it clear that highway authorities cannot be blamed for everything that happens on their roads.
“Although National Highways maintains the SRN (strategic road network), it cannot be held responsible for every problem which arises.”
A spokesperson for National Highways said: “We are sorry to hear of this incident and the inconvenience and concern it will have caused.
“When potholes do occur we repair them as soon as possible, and we are presently in the process of a repair to be carried out as soon as possible.
“Our comprehensive maintenance and renewals programme, which we operate across all of our major roads and motorways, helps to minimise the risks of potholes occurring but it can’t eradicate them.
“Safety is National Highways top priority, and on dual carriageways like the M25 we carry out a rolling programme of safety inspections to maintain our roads in a safe condition while causing minimal disruption for road users.”
KwikFit’s annual Pothole Impact Tracker which estimated the annual cost in damage to vehicles from potholes in 2023 as £1.49 billion.
THE POST Office could scrap two in three jobs in a cost-cutting drive.
Some of the estimated £200million savings will be used to improve sub-postmasters’ pay, it was reported last night.
A review — announced in the wake of the Horizon IT scandal — may see staff cut from 3,100 to around 1,000.
Roles at the London HQ could go.
Sub-postmasters, who run most of the 11,500 Post Office branches, will not be affected.
Similarly, posties – employed by Royal Mail – would not be affected.
But grants to rural Post Offices could be cut, raising the risk of closures.
The Post Office said the priorities of its interim chairman are “remediation for post-masters affected by the IT scandal” and boosting their income.
Its recommendations were currently under discussion with the government.
More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted based on faulty data.