It can make for a very uncomfortable car ride when you must travel for a long time down a road somewhere that is riddled with potholes. Potholes can be terrible for the front end and undercarriage of your car especially when you do not see them coming. When you hit a deep pothole doing fifty or sixty miles an hour, it can do some real damage when you do not have time to slow down.

Although all states in our country try as they might to keep up with repairing state highways and interstates, it can be a never ending job to try and keep up with the destruction that roads endure year after year. Focusing so much on the main roads in a state can sometimes leave little funding for back roads that many of us have to use to get back and forth to our homes when we live in more rural areas, but we must drive on them anyway.

There are several things that cause potholes and shoulder erosion to roads, but one of the most severe causes is water. There is no way to stop rain, snow, and sleet from falling on roadways everywhere. Once the roads get wet, it begins eroding the pavement surfaces. It weakens the structure and when heavy vehicles drive over these weakened areas it causes the potholes or cracks. Then as more rain, sleet, or snow falls into they cracks and freeze the pavement, it only causes them to crack and broaden even more. It is an endless process.

Of course, states with larger amounts or rain and snowfall encounter the most damaged roads because some roads have to be salted to prevent hazardous driving conditions. The salt that is used will further weaken the road surfaces. Sometimes there is just nothing that can be done to prevent these potholes that are so annoying. About the best we can do is to try and pay closer attention as we drive to avoid these obstacles in the road.

It is ironic that as much as we detest poor road conditions, it seems that we despise the road work that it required to fix these problems just as much. When we are in a hurry and run into the road crews that are patching or repairing, we get annoyed by the inconvenience of having to wait while they work. We just have to face the fact that life can be annoying sometimes and in order to make one thing better, we might have to be annoyed by the cure occasionally.