You get what you pay for. For example, my budget for maintaining approx 500km of carriageway this year is £400.000 = £800/km. A permanent repair to a 'normal' sized pothole costs around £1-300 depending on size, depth, location in carriageway, road width, traffic volume etc. If I spent the whole budget on pot holes I could fix around 2000. However, this budget is also used for repairing edge of carriageway overrun damage, subsidence and heave (a growing problem in recent years).
Although I agree with Waynne that patching isn't the best way to repair a road, it is the best we can manage with the available resourses. The cost of planing and resurfacing a carriageway is around £20-30/m2 when done in large areas (>1000m2). I could spend my budget very quickly that way! 15 roads and money is spent. I, therefore, have to spend the budget sensibly and as I have no chance of repairing every defect I have to make difficult judgements every day on which jobs to order and which to delay.
If a pothole repair is done properly (not aways the case) it will last many years. Most potholes appearing now are new ones.
I find that I am able to avoid potholes by doing what the highway code advises - Look ahead. If you hit a pot hole you were not looking where you were going
If you didn't see the pot hole, would you see a cyclist or child at the same location?
Highway authorities are only liable for damage to your car if they haven't adhered to their maintenance policy. If the hole has appeared since the last scheduled inspection and they have not been advised of its location prior to you hitting it they are not liable. As many roads have an inspection frequency of every 3 months or more, a lot of holes have appeared since the last inspection so bear this in mind.
