British Pothole-Repair Lorry Achieves Pothole Status Retroactively

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

A 26-tonne pothole-repair lorry sent on Sunday to fix a stretch of broken country road in Somerset has been swallowed by it. The vehicle, owned by a firm called Stabilised Pavements Ltd, settled at a 45-degree angle in a ditch slightly larger than itself, three metres from a road sign reading “skid risk, max speed 20mph,” surrounded by potholes it could not and did not fix.

Photographs of the scene at Butleigh Drove, near the village of Walton, show the lorry surrounded by orange cones and at least four other potholes. None of those potholes have been repaired either. The workmen, who exited the cab on the high side, spent the remainder of the day helplessly standing beside the road as legally required by their union work agreements.

Stabilised Pavements Ltd did not respond to a request for comment. The lorry did not respond either, because it was an inanimate vehicle. Somerset Council said the vehicle will be recovered “once engineers have assessed the underlying peat for stability,” which is expected to take between 3-5 years to complete.

The incident comes sixteen months into Labour’s £1.6 billion National Pothole Programme, announced last year to address what the prime minister at the time called “a generational scandal of British road maintenance.” The programme has now succeeded in eliminating one pothole in the least efficient way possible. Officials say it is too early to assess outcomes. 

The wreck has, in the meantime, become a regional tourist attraction. Villagers have driven out from neighbouring parishes to look at it. One has begun giving directions using the lorry as a landmark. Another has photographed his children in front of it. A man from Glastonbury arrived Monday morning, looked at it for one full minute, said “yep,” and then drove home. These are exciting times we live in.