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Updated: Devon man to sue council after pothole causes four serious cycling crashesA pothole yesterday - Image by dasmart via Flickr

Updated: Devon man to sue council after pothole causes four serious cycling crashes

Council says it's not liable...
by John Stevenson
Fri, Mar 14, 2014 14:33
35

A Devon man is planning to sue the county council after he became the  victim of a pothole in Exeter that had already put two other riders in hospital.

Lee Bingham, 43, was on his way to collect his son from school in October last year when he went over the handlebars after hitting the hole on Pinhoe Road.

He was knocked unconscious by the crash and woke to find himself surrounded by paramedics in an ambulance, according to Adam Walmesley of the Express and Echo.

He was treated for minor head and shoulder injuries at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and his £1,000 road bike was declared “unrepairable” by a local bike shop.

Devon County Council has refused to accept liability for the crash.

But on August 20 two other cyclists ended up in hospital after crashing in the same spot.

John Thacker, 72 was injured when he came off his road bike and in hospital met a young woman who had apparently been injured in the same location just an hour earlier.

Mr Bingham has vowed to fight for compensation payments to all three pothole victims and is prepared to take his own case to court.

“I am building-up a negligence case against the council,” he said.

“The road surface should have been impeccable in the summer. I’d like to know why nothing was done about the pothole between August and October.”

Mr Bingham took pictures and measurements of the hole, and is contacting local councillors and businesses in an effort to gather as much information as possible about the state of the road.

A council spokesman said: “We cannot comment on individual cases.”

“Devon County Council is very good at promoting cycling, But unless it repairs the roads properly, people will be put off cycling,” Mr Bingham added.

Potholes can be reported via the Fill That Hole site and its associated iPhone app.

Update: As commenter allaboutadam writes below, this hole's tally of crashes is at least four.

Potholes
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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35 comments

Avatar
TheCyclingRooster replied to mrmo | 10 years ago
0 likes

Hi to you all following this item. In the style of Ricky Tomlinson 'Acceptable limits',MY ARSE.
In the past I have reported potholes to FillThatPotHole,FixMyStreet,Lancashire County Council,West Lancashire Borough Council,The Ormskirk Champion and my local Labour MP.
Many of the potholes and severely sunken grids and manhole covers that I reported along with images that accompanied the report were/are on very frequently used rural lanes used by cyclist to avoid the main routes and the early morning Brain Dead Drivers.
A great many of them are still as I reported them but with additional depth/width/length and are getting larger by the day as they slowly but surely become more and more unavoidable by vehicles.
I have been 'Close Called, many times because of vehicles swerving to avoid potholes and nearly taking me out of the cycling population.
In all of my 57yrs of cycling and 50yrs as both a driver and motorcyclist I have never seen our roads in such an deplorable state of disrepair and neglect.
White lining that is difficult to see in the dark; never mind in misty/foggy or conditions of heavy rain.

Avatar
earth replied to cryocon | 10 years ago
0 likes
cryocon wrote:

Good luck to him. I've had an ongoing case against my council for nearly a year now from a pothole incident, was knocked out and broke collar bone. Luckily bike was ok, but clothing was ruined. Just got a letter the other day from solicitor saying they are denying responsibility as the pothole was within acceptable limits. Surely acceptable limits are no potholes at all. 14

If riding through the pothole caused you to suffer a broken collarbone then how can that be acceptable?

Avatar
stefv replied to cryocon | 10 years ago
0 likes
cryocon wrote:

. Luckily bike was ok

he he, true cyclist 1

Avatar
STATO | 10 years ago
0 likes

Always worth reporting potholes, especially ones on your commute. If you ride pasat it every day you can afford 5min to stop and use the Fill that Hole app. Once reported the council are more likely to a) Do something, b) Be held accountable for not acting.

Avatar
northstar | 10 years ago
0 likes

A council spokesman said: “We cannot comment on individual cases.” - We hope this will go away, please shut up about it.

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