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When I was a kid, our road was littered with potholes that the county wouldn't fix. When we were pouring concrete inside the barn, our parents gave us a wheelbarrow full of leftover mix and told us to go down and fill them. While we were doing it, dad called up the county to "let them know we were taking care of the potholes ourselves." "Taking care how?" "Filling them with concrete." "What?!? Do NOT do that!" "Too late, the kids have been gone for at least an hour." The concrete set overnight (very low traffic road). The county was out patching asphalt over our patches the very next day. The patches are still there, over a decade later!
Wondering if you engineers know if that super permeable road stuff helps or hurts the longevity of a road. On the one hand I suspect it's good to keep the road dry but suspect if a highly porous material did get ice in it it would be split in no time flat. Any material experts know about that oddball stuff?
@@vcttls railroads are only superior if they exist, are electrified and cheap enough for the majority of the population to use them, if the network and for gods, the sorting and delivery systems are not built they are pretty inefficient. And building new railroads today is a thing that is way more expensive than streets.
So, funny story about that whole having paved roads thing... here in Illinois, we have a saying: "In England, we drive on the left. In Illinois, we drive on what's left."
Grady, you're an example of what's right with the engineering, education, RUclips, and the world in general. Thanks for your example and efforts in this video and others!
In my country, the government has managed to significantly reduce the costs of road maintenance by simply not doing it. edit: from Hungary, stop asking
Ты забыл добавить, что только в России могут быть перепады температуры с +3 до - 2 каждый день! Вот например этой весной, таких дней было 10 подряд! Весна у нас очень долгая и таких дней очень много! Физику изучали, знаете что происходит с водой при замерзании?
@@isavana33 Беларусь подойдет? Казахстан? Польша? Финляндия? Все страны которые далеко от экватора и от морей/океанов подвержены таким перепадам температур. Да те же США откуда автор. Если говорить о северных штатах.
well that and if your a dumbass driving a car with low pro tires and you hit a pot hole your tire ends up rolling away from your car and your driving on your rim like an idiot crying about your stupid tires
@@raven4k998 love my 265/35/18 continentals Low profile (not stretched) Is the way to go if the roads aren’t too terrible around you just don’t ever run low profile runflats they’re truly awful, my factory steel rims had 3 cracks from run flat tires; I’ve been running standard low profiles on my daily driver for 2 years 50k miles with motegi alloys and no bends yet, also the wider the tire the more impact it will absorb.
@@Whiboi oo cool you drive self removing tires I love watching those things come off people cars when they hit a pot hole it's hilarious this one time I had to stop at a red light just chilling then all of a sudden I see a tire rolling by look over and a car pulls up not tire on the rim hilarious and cool to watch so watch out for pot holes and only hit one if you see me
This guy matches almost perfectly my stereotypical image of an engineer... And he's good at what he does. Accurate explanation, easy to understand. Thumbs up
saurav sharma What are you talking about? You're telling me you don't use the service that ANY Civil Engineer provides? So you don't live in a house with a roof, you don't drive on a road, and you don't drink water?? Sounds about right lol
This sheds some light on a recent mystery for me on my residential street actually. We had this one spot that kept developing pothole - but what I mean here is not "once a year," instead the asphalt was disintegrating after every single heavy rain! And living in the southeast USA, heavy rains are REAL common. Eventually the city came in and did a bunch of digging, a trench across the width of the street - that poor crew had to spend almost 14 hours digging up something and then putting it all back. Later on I found out from the neighbor, there was a city water pipe that had some kind of leak or crack...and I'd wondered what on earth that had to do with the road. No one had needed to boil their water or anything like that, so I thought "how bad of a crack could it have been?" But learning this - I understand much better now - it wouldn't need to be a big crack at ALL to make the dirt beneath the road way erode. And when the city tried just patching the potholes - the water pipe was still the problem. So naturally the rains just took away the patch and widened the hole even more!
This video is a really great understanding of the industry and the logistics and bureaucracy involved. I run a road work crew and I work flat out trying to repair potholes but as much as I can fix them, I have one crew with a city of 45 suburbs and thousands of kilometres of roads. My brief is to rapidly make them safe until a patching crew can repair them permanently. Unfortunately I have to return to some sites multiple times because there are not enough resources to go around to fix every little pothole permanently, hence the constant bandaids. Besides, it’s not cost effective to send an entire patching crew to repair a tiny road section. It’s a trade off between permanent repair and coverage of an area. I work a dangerous job where I’m constantly on the road and as I’m visible to the community cop the understandable ire of them, but I’m working hard to make the roads safe and I also live in the city and actually care so a little understanding from the community and education would go a long way. The irony is people get annoyed that you’re impeding traffic briefly but also want the problems fixed.
The biggest reason most potholes come back is they don't address the underlying issue. The subsoil is not stable. In my area(the Texas gulf coast) we have a high clay content soil we call gumbo. It has very high amounts of hydraulic movement. To prevent this, the subsoil is now stabilized by mixing in cement for 10-14 inches, before the base goes down. That prevents most potholes before they start. To repair a pothole, they dig up enough asphalt and bas to get a tiller down to the subsoil and do the same thing. Then they put it back together in 1-2 inch lifts.
Lol not sure where you are but in Houston we certainly don’t fix potholes right. Usually a truck that sprays glue and fulls the hole with asphalt. So we just kinda halfway fill them, no where near actually fixing them.
I have a friend that is a supervisor for the company that does all the roads in my city and he says they do some things wrong so they get paid to fix it later
So funny. Was watching this and thinking exactly the same, being in Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm tempted to share this video with the Johannesburg Roads Agency. They might learn a thing or two. Especially as we heard towards the rainy season.
You are really lucky, there is one 5 meter from my door, a big whole right next to a bump, there are lots of holes in the highway which I need to take to go to anywhere outside my town, there is a section where a lot of heacy semis drive, there is about 2-3 holes a meter
Only once or twice? Must be nice. I’m a delivery driver so I spend hours at a time on neglected streets. So many neighborhood streets are just falling apart and no one will do anything about it
also you can't get on a bus or other vehicle and "go somewhere else in relative ease" in most of the world either. Most of the northern hemisphere, yes. World? No.
pothole will keep happen as long you don't resurface the road which will take more time just fixing.. another way to sovle is the reduce the heavy truck.
I definitely would not consider myself an engineer, I cook for a living and am terrible at math. But you have made learning more about engineering so fun!!!! Thank you Grady!!!
Biggest thing that helped in my city is that they were no longer immune from liability due to damage to cars caused by potholes. That fixed things pretty quick when the insurance company started going after them.
I am a trucker and just discovered your channel. I am the guy who likes driving and do 600 plus miles per day its really cool learning how the stuff is built i use everyday. Keep up the good work 😁
I think especially since working from home this last year and a half, driving has become a pleasure for me. Driving represents freedom and opportunity to me. I can go from place to place. I can go see my family. I am grateful to be able to drive. I used to commute an hour and a half each day for work before I relocated. Now I have a short commute. I don't ever want to take driving for granted again.
It’s called reliability engineering - the council paves the roads only for them to stay safe for a period of time. This way, the public sector has a justification for road works year round. Then the council puts the council tax up and is asking for more money from the government. That’s the english way at least - you’re stuck in the car in traffic, bad weather, Road works and lots of potholes.
This is one of the channels where you can like every video before even seeing it. I love the explanations with the small flow models and so on, it’s just great!
Pot hole stories: When I was nine in jamaica my uncle put me on duty to watch out for pot holes (it was at night) I was pretty good at finding them During my last trip to jamaica my uncles van was losing so much gasoline, when we where leaving we found out the problem , a pothole caused the gas tank to leak, That’s my pothole stories.
Over here on clay soil, I see that 30cm of gravel and 15cm of iron-smelter residue is used to drain water to the ditches. The smelter rocks are not as easy to wash away.
@@benuscore8780 correct. I didn't remember the word. In Dutch, it's called 'hoogovenslakken'. 'tall furnace snails' doesn't make much sense in English.
Interesting. The Romans more or less did the same thing. The slag from iron bloomeries was used in road building wherever possible. Occasionally,lightning strikes will show where this was done in no longer used sections. The slag is conductive,and a whole section of sod will get torn up in the blast.
In Japan : "Wow, that's a potholes !" 3 days later, no potholes In Indonesia : "Wow, that's a potholes !", a year later, the same potholes still exist (even bigger than before)
I actually work in road repair and run roadwork crews so I know exactly what the local government spends on road repair almost to the cent, and my crew alone uses $100,000 alone in asphalt per annum. Add to that the wages and running costs (fuel, maintenance, miscellaneous equipment etc) it’s close to $500,000 without taking into account the initial outlay of $600,000 for a asphalt patching truck, for a crew to repair a city of 46 suburbs, with thousands of kilometres of roads. There’s only one minor patching (pothole) crew for a city of 405 square kilometres. It’s not necessarily a money problem because I live in a well funded city that’s never been in the red once since convicts built the roads in the first place, but a resource problem and logistics problem and a growing city with high volume of traffic with increasing heavy vehicular traffic problem. I work a minimum 60 hours a week to fix the roads but it’s just not feasible a city of my size to have only one crew running, but unfortunately the public don’t want to spend a million dollars to get another crew up and running so the short of it is I’m one man trying to solve everyone’s problems and cop abuse from pissed off residents. TLDR: Road owners do spend a lot of money and time repairing roads but it’s a very complex issue.
I had a buddy in college from Chicago. In the summer, he worked on a pothole maintenance crew. Common practice was to fix as few holes as possible, if any, and pave driveways for cash with the asphalt instead. He said it was a coveted job due to the large cash income that crews could make (he had family that ran a few crews, which is how he got his summer jobs).
Especially multi-billion dollar corporate social welfare cheques to exon-mobil, who definitely does not need it. (But also happens to “donate” millions to our government officials)
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 For the cost of repairing roads for 1 year, thousands of such mansions could be built. But there are only a handful. It's not a big deal.
@@michaelbuckers Its not about the scale its about the princaple. Palices are not the only things the corrupt will use money for once they start taking it from the tax payers.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Eh. The worst corruption amounts to less than 1% of the budget being appropriated. So yeah it's a matter of principle- because it's not actually significant enough to be important.
This is why it is so important to not drive into flooded road. You have no idea how much has actually eroded under that water and in major storms it can be a shockingly large amount of missing road and subgrade.
“Poor condition” is just normal where I live. It is so nice when I find an area that was just paved and it suddenly feels like my teeth aren’t being shaken out of my head. Even then, it’s not always great. My local grocery store’s parking lot was getting a lot of pot holes so they repaved it. I’m pretty sure that they just put down a new layer of asphalt on top of the existing layer instead of properly tearing it up and flattening the ground. I realize parking lots are extremely busy areas and need to be constantly available, but half-assing a job is almost worse than not doing it at all. Louisiana does not know how to make roads. Even our highways aren’t made properly. One exit on I-10 has a huge bump in it. Granted it’s not that big but going over it at 45 mph is more than a little jarring. It’s not surprising that so many people here have crossovers or trucks with tires with high sidewalls. My wheels probably would have been destroyed by now if I didn’t have really tall tires
Title: How potholes work me : What a boring topic Channel: Practical Engineering me: Click! At this point I am myself surprised at how interesting you can make the most mundane of things. I cant have enough.
In humid tropical regions, potholes also form at a very high rate. There's no freeze-thaw action, but there is a seasonality in the subgrade's performance, depending on the alternation between wet and dry seasons. During the dry season, clay soils are hard and sturdy, and thus provide excellent support for the weight of vehicles. When the wet season comes in, water infiltrates and induces things like plasticity (clays absorb water and become soft and pliable), expansion (some clays absorb water into their molecular structure and increase in volume, much like the ice lenses in freezing conditions) and drainage problems (clays are less pervious than sands, gravels and loams), so the water often is limited to escaping under pressure through cracks and weak seams.
The great thing about dirt roads is that they don't need to be maintained and the only thing you need to worry about is downed trees/foliage. If there's a pothole, just fill it with dirt from the roadside! You can also get a nice mud bog paint job after it rains. Yee yee! 🤘🤠
For all the German viewers out there: Yes this is real, it's not a prank video, or an April Fools'. We actually have lots and lots of potholes where I live.
@Juden Arier Dude, I was making a joke, no need to get upset. Also, I have lived in Germany for some time, and when I came back to Hungary, the roads seemed unbelievably nightmarish in comparison.
I feel the same for france. In the countryside, I'm always amazed at the quality of the roads. The worse is in paris, but as bad as it is, there are no potholes.
@Practical Engineering - could you cover this topic more with explaining hydrostatic shocks? As I've understood it, upon hitting the water in a pothole, the resulting shock causes the water to be forced in to the road sublayers in macro- and microscopic fissures - and pumps out material as the water is squeezed (almost instantly) back out by the re-compacting ground as the fissures collapse. Like lightly stomping on a puddle on grass repeadetly causes the water to muddy up as fine particles are brought to the surface. If you continue and increase the force, material begins to be removed from the effected area by being ejected outwards. Now do this with traffic and you are literally pumping material out of the ground. The fissures ever deepen as the lessening of fine particles allows for water to be forced farther and farther, as there is nothing to dampen it's flow among larger paeticles. So you'll end up in a volume of material beneath the hole that's been rinsed with pressured water maybe thousands of times, fracked, decompressed, compressed. Rinse, repeat. I don't understand how fixing the situation could only include resurfacing, as now you're resurfacing a structure that's not the same as what surrounds it - the near-0-sized particles are missing and stable compaction cannot be achieved without those. So, what you're resurfacing is a moving, shaking, altering structure. This is a huge issue here in Finland.
I suppose it depends on the environment, but I thought there was a lot of evidence showing roads with a concrete base cost significantly less long term because of the reduced maintenance cost. As well, when they do need resurfaced, it is pretty simple as the foundation will most likely still be fine. Here in the UK, we tend to use very cheap, simple road designs, and it definitely shows. We also route all utilities under roads by default, which means that, even when you do get a nice new road surface, within a year a utility company will have been granted a licence to dig a massive trench through it and leave it with a big patch that will inevitably cause a pothole pretty soon. Madness. The fact that we route utilities under the roads actually incentivises us to use bad road designs as the utility companies don't want to have to dig through concrete every time they have to service the infrastructure.
1:46 Grady I don't know how many rainbow roads you've driven on but I wouldn't exactly call them the pinnacles of contemporary engineering and safety. 30+ years yet they keep installing those blue shells
I agree also cars now are so disconnected from everything and style wise are copy and paste of one another antiques are where its at the amount of information that's sent to you though the wheel, brakes, gas, and just the butt alone makes cars much more enjoyable than new ones
in particular when you do the work on your car, driving isnt just the experience of driving but also determining the mechanical function of the work you just did or the car as a whole lol
Hmm, nice that you do. But I think I could never, I'm glad I have the freedom not to take a car because everything is reachable by other, more convenient or relaxed ways of transportation. Plus clean air, high living standards, and such are just things I could never miss.
I can explain exactly how potholes work in Illinois. Step 1 - Build the cheapest road possible. Step 2 - Wait for potholes to develop. Step 3 - Campaign for re-election on fixing the potholes. Step 4 - Get re-elected. Step 5 - Repair the potholes in the cheapest possible way (using one of your favorite campaign contributors). Step 6 - Wait for potholes to reappear. Step 6 - Repeat for your entire political career.
@@anthonyaguirre7143 yes because salt keeps water in liquid form at a lower temperature. In other words, that trapped water creates a lens that stays around for longer in the subgrade. It also means it undergoes many more freeze-thaw cycles exacerbating erosion
Potholes in western PA were a constant problem in the heavy industry traffic and servere winter days from decades past. Most of the road weren't treated with tar for some reason but the few that were treated with tar held up very well. Some were tarred and sprinkled with rocks. They never got potholes.Nice explanation of the pothole process.
Public roads are generally a terrible place to have fun. Go to a closed track, an offroad park, mountain bike trail, even a winding country road, whatever. It's the difference between masturbating and having sex. To say nothing of being an asshat.
I actually used to get really excited before I was about to go somewhere, I just love all the engineering that goes into our roads and the vehicles we drive
"So, roadway owners spend a lot of time and money fixing them" haha, yeah. It's a shame I live in a small city so they can't afford to fix the half-dozen potholes I have to swerve to avoid every night I'm driving home from work. Oh, but those new rustic streetlamps they put in and the crosswalk signals that nobody uses because there's like maybe three pedestrians a day sure do look really good!
Tell me about it! Same here - small, rural Midwestern town. Horrid side streets (main routes are maintained by the state), dilapidated homes in dying villages with less than 1300 people in them. It's all really sad and depressing, but not to the bureaucratic commissioners. They don't have to worry about getting their wittle feetsies wet when they go to the courthouse for a meeting with their fancy schmancy heated sidewalk tiles. Meanwhile, our small towns are starting to look like the seedy side of Cincinnati... ugh. :(
Mi 28 I’m not an engineer but spending millions to fix twelve (12) potholes seems like an exaggeration. But I do see your point. @skele boner Run for mayor bro. Get some shit done in that small city
this is why i love these videos.. i started off thinking, i know how potholes form, why do we need a video on it? and halfway thru i was learning so many new things and it's logical and lovely 😌
The problem isn't that we aren't willing to pay taxes, it's the fact that we cannot choose where our taxes are going. Governments act like they are an authority over the land they span but the reality is that they should act like a service instead, that starts by allowing citizens to choose where their taxes go. WE pay with our time sacrificed to tasteless jobs and WE surrender our money because it's supposed to go for a service we should all receive.
Human nature. 3rd party purchases work that way. Basically, its not their money, so they don't care if something is insufficient or not cost effective. They also don't have to produce something you value, at a budget you can afford, in order for you to pay for it. They just sick their goons on you with g u n s if you don't wish to pay (upfront). Taxation is theft/armed robbery, no matter what noble sounding euphemisms they give it. My company used to fix muni roads and parking lots, btw. First thing I'd ask when any project mgr or muni official called was "What are your fiscal budget requirements?" i.e. how much are you required (forced) to spend to make sure you get the same bloated, unnecessary budget next year. Then I'd say I could probably get close with about $200-$600 (depending on size of muni) leftover for you to put in petty cash, throw yourselves a much deserved office party, (probably embezzle) etc. Don't do that, don't get the job. Then we'd get interrupted 4-5 times, they'd refuse to pay standard overhead during forced down time, I'd sue them, they'd appeal multiple times which wasted more $ than they owed me, wait another year to get paid by the bankrupt jerks, end up 3-4 times over budget when they could've just not been so...Department of Redundancy Department about it all. I'd end up with slightly more profit than I'd make from the private sector, but with 1000 x's the aggrivation. The rest of the $ went to waste on lawyers and guys waiting around, not doing work. All for messing with big daddy govt. AND...your potholes would still be 2 years behind on getting fixed. So, yeah I know how corrupt the system is. Now that you know why there's such a thing as $5000.00 govt. toilet seats and $1000.00 hammers, next time you pay taxes, send a few toilet seats and a hammer. Tell them to keep the change. Man, I get grumpy on rain days... Hmm ...that, or I just got old.
@@markcangila1613 What good is helping a segment of society when the we are all plagued by failing infrastructure? What good is a homeless shelter when there are lead pipes to replace, tunnels to repair and a bridge connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island that costs 19 dollars to cross?
"You've all experienced potholes one or twice" man here in Balkan countries there is no street without potholes. Except in highways but in Croatia the highways do have potholes
My town has potholes on every other road because our road budget is shared with two other towns tho other two both being tourists attractions so they get all the budget and we get like £1
@@steamrestorer4559 In Germany i have never seen a pothole on the Autobahn. Would be quite dangerous driving over them with like ~210 kmh lol. Citys have some, mostly small towns.
@@foty8679 What I like about the roads in Germany that when the holes in them are repaired the new surface is smoothed out so you cannot feel the transition between the old and new (repaired) road. While the road may look "spotty", and you can clearly see where the potholes used to be, you do not feel it while driving, it's all smooth.
I was in Croatia (Istria specifically) in January this year, I travelled on local roads 99% of the time and I must say the y were very good quality. Even the apparently less-travelled ones in the sticks, like the one I used going from Trieste to Rijeka, where I only saw two other cars during the 90 minute-trip from the Slovenian border was really nice. The next day I spent driving along some crazy winding roads consisting almost entirely of hairpin bends :), and it was OK as well. I also drove on local roads all the way to the Hungarian border and I found no reason to complain. I don't know about the southern part of your country, but the north has nothing to be ashamed of. The coastal stretch from Opatia to Zagorie was fantastic.
Long ago when I lived in Michigan, there was none of this vibrating compactor nonsense as in this video. They just piled the pothole high with asphalt and let the traffic do the compacting. Hopefully that is no longer the case.
In Northwest Botswana the potholes are as big as the elephants that create them in the first place. The holes are as large as a jumbo jaccuzi often spanning the width of the road.
Haven’t seen one ever in my country. Netherlands btw and we pay about $1000 a year in road tax and pay $9 a gallon for petrol so it better be well maintained
I will say, having paved roadways everywhere is certainly something taken for granted. It truly is a monumental task. I will add that the first time I bought a sports car, I did look forward to driving everyday. You don't even have to speed. Everything in the experience is enhanced.
I would also suggest *a real fancy car can enhance the driving experience too.* And this doesn't have to be a new luxury model with every new electronic 'feature' and costing $85,000. It can as easily be a 17 year old luxury car that's still in good condition, and that still makes its driver feel special every time she / he gets behind the wheel, and might only cost $15,000. or less :)
I love the new perspectives that you introduce in your videos. Like in this one, you had me think about how roads and sidewalks are not just _there_ ... instead, they are public works like parks and statues and government buildings whose quality is based on how much the community invests.
What are you talking about? The community does not have ownership of the roads. If we did, we wouldn't have these problems! (although we may have other ones)
@@RobotronSage governments and cities are also communities. Or are you just watching this from the perspective that parts of the infrastructure is owned by people who donated money to build something? That is something that mostly exists in US and is not a general thing. And, as I said, those are not the only kinds of communities
Long ago, when most roads were dirt, each village would have an assortment of craftsmen. Blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers, potters etc. Sometimes, when asked to make a pot, the potter would look for the most finely pulverized clay around and often find it in the wagon ruts of a nearby road. When he dug up the clay for his pot the hole he left was called a POTHOLE. I really enjoy your content Grady.
i love driving, it's my favorite way to travel i'm always excited whenever i have to drive to somewhere, whether it's short or long distances i know i'm not the only one ...
@@cgiunta6542 Then imagine if we had a government who’s willing to take prevention action to stop the insurance fraud. Then again, the US loves to throw money into dumpster fires just to watch the fire grow
@@cgiunta6542 there wouldn't be any insurance fraud relating to that because I guarantee the roads would be in perfect condition if the government was responsible for vehicle damage caused by poorly designed/maintained roads
@@justeunfan3364 but if they had to pay to repair vehicle damage caused by bad road maintenance, you'd at least be getting something for your tax dollars
how appropriate that this showed up in my feed today. It's spring, and there are a lot of potholes gradually being uncovered as the snow melts. Now we've had another snowstorm and temperatures dropped below freezing again, so a lot of water probably froze underneath the tarmac, giving us even more potholes when it warms back up.
As someone who rides a motorcycle a lot, pot holes are my number 2 fear. A middle aged Karen on her mobile while driving a minivan full of screaming kids is my number 1 fear. Oh and all while she is smoking a cigarette
@@knuppel8875 they are, to some extent. I hit a pothole on a descending false-flat, i braked as soon as i saw it but still hit it at around 45km/h(28mph), my wheels went wobbly. If i hadn't braked i migth not be here typing this comment.
@@knuppel8875 I've smashed potholes going between 10-40mph on my bike, every time is a different experience from slightly annoying to holy shit I'm going to crash.
That’s crazy because ALL I look forward to in the morning, at work, or even out wit friends, is the moment I get to get behind the wheel. My favorite part of any day. Driving provides me with clarity and focus like nothing else does
I feel that it is sometimes necessary for me to hear the absolute obvious so as to get into the 'state' or 'flow' and be more comfortable with the speaker. A gentle and calming voice also helps :)
I was an engineer at the site of a new road, when we were done I took a crew with what remained of the asphalt around town and hot-patched as many potholes as I could find.
I came expecting to learn A LOT about potholes. I wasn't disappointed! Man! The amount of facts behind such a simple thing is amazing! I knew they were created by water but never thought about ice (it doesn't snow where I live).
"... Politicians have a vested interest in good roads..." 👀 over here, government bureaucrats and politicians buy themselves larger SUVs instead of fixing the roads 🇺🇬
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Practical Engineering I hope you and your wife are doing well. I always enjoy your videos!
Just curious, does tiny movement of the earth also affect roads? I have it in my mind that the ground is always shifting around ever-so-slightly
When I was a kid, our road was littered with potholes that the county wouldn't fix. When we were pouring concrete inside the barn, our parents gave us a wheelbarrow full of leftover mix and told us to go down and fill them. While we were doing it, dad called up the county to "let them know we were taking care of the potholes ourselves."
"Taking care how?"
"Filling them with concrete."
"What?!? Do NOT do that!"
"Too late, the kids have been gone for at least an hour."
The concrete set overnight (very low traffic road). The county was out patching asphalt over our patches the very next day. The patches are still there, over a decade later!
Wondering if you engineers know if that super permeable road stuff helps or hurts the longevity of a road. On the one hand I suspect it's good to keep the road dry but suspect if a highly porous material did get ice in it it would be split in no time flat. Any material experts know about that oddball stuff?
@@vcttls railroads are only superior if they exist, are electrified and cheap enough for the majority of the population to use them, if the network and for gods, the sorting and delivery systems are not built they are pretty inefficient.
And building new railroads today is a thing that is way more expensive than streets.
So, funny story about that whole having paved roads thing... here in Illinois, we have a saying:
"In England, we drive on the left.
In Illinois, we drive on what's left."
Thomas Junker yeah, West Virginia, too.
That's pretty funny!
That'd only be funny if the roads over here in the UK weren't like driving over a ploughed field in the first place!
@@smorris12 yeah, they're quite bad.
In nepal we have nothing leff
4:18 In Canada we have four seasons: Almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.
@bro ha In Germany the last time i saw snow was 5 years ago
bro ha I live in Florida. And no
@@michaelesposito2629 Less potholes, more sinkholes?
In Philippines we have four seasons: Summer, Summer, a lil bit of rain and Summer.
I thought we had 2 here in the north, winter and road construction
Grady, you're an example of what's right with the engineering, education, RUclips, and the world in general.
Thanks for your example and efforts in this video and others!
In my country, the government has managed to significantly reduce the costs of road maintenance by simply not doing it.
edit: from Hungary, stop asking
Oof
😂😂🤘🤘
You got me in the first half
Sounds like some states I've driven in. I wonder what they do with the tax money they claim to collect for road maintenance?
@@charlessmith6412 Gotta finance tax breaks for Google, Amazon & Co somehow.
Therefore, in Russia there is an expression “spring has come and the asphalt has melted along with the snow”.
lol I love this one. Greetings from France =)
Ты забыл добавить, что только в России могут быть перепады температуры с +3 до - 2 каждый день! Вот например этой весной, таких дней было 10 подряд! Весна у нас очень долгая и таких дней очень много! Физику изучали, знаете что происходит с водой при замерзании?
@@isavana33 "Только в России"! Ага, в других странах такого быть не может.
Сдается мне проблема не в этом.
@@sergeyk856 покажи в какой?
@@isavana33 Беларусь подойдет? Казахстан? Польша? Финляндия?
Все страны которые далеко от экватора и от морей/океанов подвержены таким перепадам температур.
Да те же США откуда автор. Если говорить о северных штатах.
how potholes work: truck drivers wait till they're full of water, then hit em with every wheel they can.
well that and if your a dumbass driving a car with low pro tires and you hit a pot hole your tire ends up rolling away from your car and your driving on your rim like an idiot crying about your stupid tires
😃
@@raven4k998 love my 265/35/18 continentals
Low profile (not stretched) Is the way to go if the roads aren’t too terrible around you just don’t ever run low profile runflats they’re truly awful, my factory steel rims had 3 cracks from run flat tires; I’ve been running standard low profiles on my daily driver for 2 years 50k miles with motegi alloys and no bends yet, also the wider the tire the more impact it will absorb.
@@Whiboi oo cool you drive self removing tires I love watching those things come off people cars when they hit a pot hole it's hilarious this one time I had to stop at a red light just chilling then all of a sudden I see a tire rolling by look over and a car pulls up not tire on the rim hilarious and cool to watch so watch out for pot holes and only hit one if you see me
@@raven4k998 305/35R26 on my Tahoe. Does that make you cry worrying about what ppl have on their vehicle?
This guy matches almost perfectly my stereotypical image of an engineer... And he's good at what he does. Accurate explanation, easy to understand. Thumbs up
What he wears a glass? 😂🤦
it's racist to judge someone/anyone based on their stereotypes. even if that's a compliment.
@@apidas what does race have to do wit this
@@apidas racism is based on racial superioroty, hes just calling the dude smart and competent which is what he expects enginners to be
@@apidas Hahahahahaha! 😂
Your channel inspired me to study civil engineering, now on 3rd semester.
@@sauravsharma9357 there's still hope for you if you change your branch right now
saurav sharma toxic mindset like that definitely won’t get you a job
saurav sharma Depends. LOTS of jobs here in Denmark.
Is it hard?
saurav sharma What are you talking about? You're telling me you don't use the service that ANY Civil Engineer provides? So you don't live in a house with a roof, you don't drive on a road, and you don't drink water?? Sounds about right lol
This sheds some light on a recent mystery for me on my residential street actually. We had this one spot that kept developing pothole - but what I mean here is not "once a year," instead the asphalt was disintegrating after every single heavy rain! And living in the southeast USA, heavy rains are REAL common.
Eventually the city came in and did a bunch of digging, a trench across the width of the street - that poor crew had to spend almost 14 hours digging up something and then putting it all back. Later on I found out from the neighbor, there was a city water pipe that had some kind of leak or crack...and I'd wondered what on earth that had to do with the road. No one had needed to boil their water or anything like that, so I thought "how bad of a crack could it have been?"
But learning this - I understand much better now - it wouldn't need to be a big crack at ALL to make the dirt beneath the road way erode. And when the city tried just patching the potholes - the water pipe was still the problem. So naturally the rains just took away the patch and widened the hole even more!
"How do portholes work?"
It works when the government doesn't.
If so, the potholes work 24/7.
I wish every time I got a speeding ticket, a pot hole would be closed with that money...
But they don't, so I just change plates.
@@akshayasimha ye India wale har jagah kahe aa jate hai😂😂
@@mdcclxxviepluribusunum1066 you sound like those generic trump supporters that go on facebook and harass people
@@OdysseyABMS his name of choice practically screams “deep state” or some other QAnon/Trump(is there really a separation, lmao?) talking point.
This video is a really great understanding of the industry and the logistics and bureaucracy involved. I run a road work crew and I work flat out trying to repair potholes but as much as I can fix them, I have one crew with a city of 45 suburbs and thousands of kilometres of roads. My brief is to rapidly make them safe until a patching crew can repair them permanently. Unfortunately I have to return to some sites multiple times because there are not enough resources to go around to fix every little pothole permanently, hence the constant bandaids. Besides, it’s not cost effective to send an entire patching crew to repair a tiny road section. It’s a trade off between permanent repair and coverage of an area. I work a dangerous job where I’m constantly on the road and as I’m visible to the community cop the understandable ire of them, but I’m working hard to make the roads safe and I also live in the city and actually care so a little understanding from the community and education would go a long way. The irony is people get annoyed that you’re impeding traffic briefly but also want the problems fixed.
The biggest reason most potholes come back is they don't address the underlying issue. The subsoil is not stable. In my area(the Texas gulf coast) we have a high clay content soil we call gumbo. It has very high amounts of hydraulic movement. To prevent this, the subsoil is now stabilized by mixing in cement for 10-14 inches, before the base goes down. That prevents most potholes before they start. To repair a pothole, they dig up enough asphalt and bas to get a tiller down to the subsoil and do the same thing. Then they put it back together in 1-2 inch lifts.
If that is true, maybe potholes come back so workers can keep coming back?
Sure, but doing all that work might be more expensive than just repeatedly filling the potholes, at least in some places.
Lol not sure where you are but in Houston we certainly don’t fix potholes right. Usually a truck that sprays glue and fulls the hole with asphalt. So we just kinda halfway fill them, no where near actually fixing them.
Those of us that live in areas with real winter can only dream of having as relatively few problems as Texas, no matter how they are "fixed".
I have a friend that is a supervisor for the company that does all the roads in my city and he says they do some things wrong so they get paid to fix it later
"Something we've all experienced once or twice"- Once or twice every minute here in South Africa.
same for russia mate :)
So funny. Was watching this and thinking exactly the same, being in Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm tempted to share this video with the Johannesburg Roads Agency. They might learn a thing or two. Especially as we heard towards the rainy season.
Brazil is not so far from you guys!!
Here in Michigan you can find the potholes by looking for fisherman or swimmers.
Quite literally the whole road in canada
“The only thing that gets bigger the more you take away” - reminded me of Brok’s riddle all over again in GOW
"something we've all experienced once or twice"
Yeah, once or twice a day
@PathOfPirate same in atlanta ga
You are really lucky, there is one 5 meter from my door, a big whole right next to a bump, there are lots of holes in the highway which I need to take to go to anywhere outside my town, there is a section where a lot of heacy semis drive, there is about 2-3 holes a meter
@@bassam_salim you mean every 12680.3 US cups
Only once or twice? Must be nice. I’m a delivery driver so I spend hours at a time on neglected streets. So many neighborhood streets are just falling apart and no one will do anything about it
also you can't get on a bus or other vehicle and "go somewhere else in relative ease" in most of the world either. Most of the northern hemisphere, yes. World? No.
My country has marvelled this technology..we have cutting edge potholes
BTW I am from India.
You just copied your technology from the Glorious Nation of Russia.
@@IIGrayfoxII correction...it was from thd soviets..we have a joke here...you got potholes on road,we Got roads on potholes...
@@IIGrayfoxII In Soviet Russia, roads drive you (mad)
pothole will keep happen as long you don't resurface the road which will take more time just fixing.. another way to sovle is the reduce the heavy truck.
i don't like potholes with cutting edge
I definitely would not consider myself an engineer, I cook for a living and am terrible at math. But you have made learning more about engineering so fun!!!! Thank you Grady!!!
A perfect pothole postulation at this early hour.
You've had a whole lot of pot.
Early?
Nice alliteration
Seorful depends on where you live. If you live in the us then yes it is early
The PPP we all need
Biggest thing that helped in my city is that they were no longer immune from liability due to damage to cars caused by potholes. That fixed things pretty quick when the insurance company started going after them.
In which country?
I am a trucker and just discovered your channel. I am the guy who likes driving and do 600 plus miles per day its really cool learning how the stuff is built i use everyday. Keep up the good work 😁
Say man you're a crazy one aren't you? 8 hours of driving daily is insane haha!
not too related but do you bring any self defense "tools"?
600 miles is nothing son
"Colder countries have more potholes."
Indian politicians: we'll prove you soooo wrong.
Kasam se bhai
I heard dirt roads don't last as long as paved ones
😂😂😂😂😂 true
States that have no money or just contract to the lowest bidder have more potholes.
FTFY
India has a strong wet season though which, for obvious reasons, erodes quite a bit
"There are lots of ways to build roads - from yellow bricks to rainbows"
Yes, sir. I am looking forward to the new Rainbow Road episode.
The most scenic roads in existence!
With enough cars leaking oil, every road can be a rainbow road!
Not trying no make a statement or anything, just a shitty joke.
I wanna know the engineering challenges of a blue shell.
When you'll drive a Tesla, press 4x on the right handle behind the steering wheel. Et voilà !! you have a rainbow road !
Any kid who grew up playing Mario Kart got nostalgic vibes when he mentioned road made of rainbow 🌈 😏😎
"Driving is a little dull."
Miata Drivers: "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."
basically anyone with a fun car to drive and place to do it freely.
Ha ha ha, I just write a similar comment before finding yours.
"Potholes are worse in freezing conditions-" They're even worse in a corrupted system.
I know right. That explains why most tropical countries have more potholes on their roads than colder ones.
I was looking for this. Up you go!
*Laughs in Balkan*
Quebec, where you have both in abundance :)
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 no
Grady: How do potholes work?
Well I never knew they were a feature.
It's not a bug it's a feature!
@@preevetElizabeth todd's fans be like
Next vid: How to engineer potholes.
They work as speed breakers. Indeed a feature.
I think especially since working from home this last year and a half, driving has become a pleasure for me. Driving represents freedom and opportunity to me. I can go from place to place. I can go see my family. I am grateful to be able to drive. I used to commute an hour and a half each day for work before I relocated. Now I have a short commute. I don't ever want to take driving for granted again.
Practical Engineering: How do potholes work?
Literally everyone: They don't.
Practical Engineering: How do potholes work?
Ukraine: Hello everyone
Ah... You beat me to it.
As though they were stoned.
Next vid: How to engineer a pothole/Marvel of pothole designs.
It’s called reliability engineering - the council paves the roads only for them to stay safe for a period of time. This way, the public sector has a justification for road works year round. Then the council puts the council tax up and is asking for more money from the government.
That’s the english way at least - you’re stuck in the car in traffic, bad weather, Road works and lots of potholes.
"So, roadway owners spend a lot of time and money fixing them"
*ha-ha*
In the oven.
_insert _*_CinemaSins_*_ laugh._
Oh, they spend a lot of time on it.
A lot of time _on only a single pothole..._
@@zxbigmikexz *ding*
Build shitty roads, spend a fortune on repairs and then replace the road with another shitty one...
This is one of the channels where you can like every video before even seeing it. I love the explanations with the small flow models and so on, it’s just great!
"You've all experienced potholes at least once or twice"
*laughs in Michigan*
The Great Lakes are just Paul Bunyan's potholes
Cries in Indian
You think that's bad, look at the highways going east out of Kansas City. That entire stretch of highway is pure pothole.
(swerves in rural Indonesian)
Laughs in Kenyan
6:40 I love your explanation of how we "choose" potholes. Please run for public office.
I'm pretty sure even with more taxes, they still wouldn't fix the roads. I would all go to political embezzlements and insider kickbacks.
@@AlphaSections If we had more engineers, scientists, and professionals in government we'd have fewer issues. I agree with Richard
Yeah... What a world where we could actually decide how our money is spent...
Politicians always have to answer to "people of influence" regardless of the political system etc.
You're probably better off becoming one of those.
It's a good sign of a bankrupt or corrupt municipality
Pot hole stories:
When I was nine in jamaica my uncle put me on duty to watch out for pot holes (it was at night) I was pretty good at finding them
During my last trip to jamaica my uncles van was losing so much gasoline, when we where leaving we found out the problem , a pothole caused the gas tank to leak,
That’s my pothole stories.
After visiting Jamaica I will never complain about potholes again.
In Jamaica they don’t have potholes, they have craters.
Come Barbados too.. roads like craters here too. Government ent doing nothing.. not one thing. Stupsesss 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️😒😑🙃
Over here on clay soil, I see that 30cm of gravel and 15cm of iron-smelter residue is used to drain water to the ditches. The smelter rocks are not as easy to wash away.
I think by "iron-smelter residue" you mean slag?
@@benuscore8780
correct. I didn't remember the word.
In Dutch, it's called 'hoogovenslakken'. 'tall furnace snails' doesn't make much sense in English.
Interesting. The Romans more or less did the same thing. The slag from iron bloomeries was used in road building wherever possible. Occasionally,lightning strikes will show where this was done in no longer used sections. The slag is conductive,and a whole section of sod will get torn up in the blast.
In Japan : "Wow, that's a potholes !" 3 days later, no potholes
In Indonesia : "Wow, that's a potholes !", a year later, the same potholes still exist (even bigger than before)
Get on Brazil's level: People had a birthday party for the pothole on their street
i.imgur DOT com/i0r5iwQ.jpg
A lot of the well developed asian countries have very well maintained roads.
Soooo, Indonesian potholes are much much better made than Japanese ones, right? :)
Exactly the same here in NYC
Same in India. Growing potholes.
1:13 As a gearhead myself, to drive be boring is so strange. Get into my car and drive feels just so good that is strange to think that is boring
What's your car?
@WonderfulBoness its a 1996 Volkswagen Logus
"Roadway owners spend a lot of time and money fixing them (potholes)."
Press X to doubt.
X as long as you not living near HOA. If you do you have to wait a few months for them to repair the road.
X
I actually work in road repair and run roadwork crews so I know exactly what the local government spends on road repair almost to the cent, and my crew alone uses $100,000 alone in asphalt per annum. Add to that the wages and running costs (fuel, maintenance, miscellaneous equipment etc) it’s close to $500,000 without taking into account the initial outlay of $600,000 for a asphalt patching truck, for a crew to repair a city of 46 suburbs, with thousands of kilometres of roads. There’s only one minor patching (pothole) crew for a city of 405 square kilometres. It’s not necessarily a money problem because I live in a well funded city that’s never been in the red once since convicts built the roads in the first place, but a resource problem and logistics problem and a growing city with high volume of traffic with increasing heavy vehicular traffic problem.
I work a minimum 60 hours a week to fix the roads but it’s just not feasible a city of my size to have only one crew running, but unfortunately the public don’t want to spend a million dollars to get another crew up and running so the short of it is I’m one man trying to solve everyone’s problems and cop abuse from pissed off residents.
TLDR: Road owners do spend a lot of money and time repairing roads but it’s a very complex issue.
Wyoming does otherwise. Lots of roads few people yet the road crews are constant in summer.
X
"Something we've all experienced once or twice"
Idk. In Chicago you'll experience it once or twice per block.
In Delhi u'll experience it after every 5 cms.
in New-Brunswick, Canada they just use the potholes as a cheaper variant of speedbumps and never patch them
There's always *that* road
I had a buddy in college from Chicago. In the summer, he worked on a pothole maintenance crew. Common practice was to fix as few holes as possible, if any, and pave driveways for cash with the asphalt instead. He said it was a coveted job due to the large cash income that crews could make (he had family that ran a few crews, which is how he got his summer jobs).
@@ScottHammet lol that's called corruption and theft
Thank you Grady for opening my eyes! you make me appreciate things that never even crossed my mind before. JOINED!
Title: "How do potholes work"?
Answer: They don't work
Dumb reply
You didn't even understand the sentence
You thought you did something
They do work. Their primary function is to destroy your rims.
Nice joke 👍 don't mind the idiots down here who haven't understood it!
I sure wish I could force my taxes to be spent on roads and infrastructure.
Instead of private mansions.
Especially multi-billion dollar corporate social welfare cheques to exon-mobil, who definitely does not need it. (But also happens to “donate” millions to our government officials)
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 For the cost of repairing roads for 1 year, thousands of such mansions could be built. But there are only a handful. It's not a big deal.
@@michaelbuckers Its not about the scale its about the princaple.
Palices are not the only things the corrupt will use money for once they start taking it from the tax payers.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Eh. The worst corruption amounts to less than 1% of the budget being appropriated. So yeah it's a matter of principle- because it's not actually significant enough to be important.
This is why it is so important to not drive into flooded road. You have no idea how much has actually eroded under that water and in major storms it can be a shockingly large amount of missing road and subgrade.
“Poor condition” is just normal where I live. It is so nice when I find an area that was just paved and it suddenly feels like my teeth aren’t being shaken out of my head. Even then, it’s not always great. My local grocery store’s parking lot was getting a lot of pot holes so they repaved it. I’m pretty sure that they just put down a new layer of asphalt on top of the existing layer instead of properly tearing it up and flattening the ground. I realize parking lots are extremely busy areas and need to be constantly available, but half-assing a job is almost worse than not doing it at all. Louisiana does not know how to make roads. Even our highways aren’t made properly. One exit on I-10 has a huge bump in it. Granted it’s not that big but going over it at 45 mph is more than a little jarring. It’s not surprising that so many people here have crossovers or trucks with tires with high sidewalls. My wheels probably would have been destroyed by now if I didn’t have really tall tires
Try driving on CA roads....
Title: How potholes work
me : What a boring topic
Channel: Practical Engineering
me: Click!
At this point I am myself surprised at how interesting you can make the most mundane of things. I cant have enough.
I wake up excited to drive. Driving is a highlight of my day. I drive further on purpose. I bought a manual on purpose. I absolutely love to drive!
manual gear?
@@MangaGamified manual transmission
In humid tropical regions, potholes also form at a very high rate. There's no freeze-thaw action, but there is a seasonality in the subgrade's performance, depending on the alternation between wet and dry seasons. During the dry season, clay soils are hard and sturdy, and thus provide excellent support for the weight of vehicles. When the wet season comes in, water infiltrates and induces things like plasticity (clays absorb water and become soft and pliable), expansion (some clays absorb water into their molecular structure and increase in volume, much like the ice lenses in freezing conditions) and drainage problems (clays are less pervious than sands, gravels and loams), so the water often is limited to escaping under pressure through cracks and weak seams.
⭐️
The great thing about dirt roads is that they don't need to be maintained and the only thing you need to worry about is downed trees/foliage. If there's a pothole, just fill it with dirt from the roadside! You can also get a nice mud bog paint job after it rains. Yee yee! 🤘🤠
For all the German viewers out there: Yes this is real, it's not a prank video, or an April Fools'. We actually have lots and lots of potholes where I live.
@Juden Arier Dude, I was making a joke, no need to get upset. Also, I have lived in Germany for some time, and when I came back to Hungary, the roads seemed unbelievably nightmarish in comparison.
@Juden Arier Alles mit der ruhe hehehe bei uns in Niedersachsen gibt es keine Gründe sich auf zu regen. Da trinken wir halt ein Bier.
I feel the same for france. In the countryside, I'm always amazed at the quality of the roads. The worse is in paris, but as bad as it is, there are no potholes.
OMG, I loved living in Germany (stationed there for 13 years) and one of those reasons was NO POTHOLES!
here in Mongolia potholes work as speed limiter !!!
@Practical Engineering - could you cover this topic more with explaining hydrostatic shocks?
As I've understood it, upon hitting the water in a pothole, the resulting shock causes the water to be forced in to the road sublayers in macro- and microscopic fissures - and pumps out material as the water is squeezed (almost instantly) back out by the re-compacting ground as the fissures collapse.
Like lightly stomping on a puddle on grass repeadetly causes the water to muddy up as fine particles are brought to the surface. If you continue and increase the force, material begins to be removed from the effected area by being ejected outwards.
Now do this with traffic and you are literally pumping material out of the ground. The fissures ever deepen as the lessening of fine particles allows for water to be forced farther and farther, as there is nothing to dampen it's flow among larger paeticles.
So you'll end up in a volume of material beneath the hole that's been rinsed with pressured water maybe thousands of times, fracked, decompressed, compressed. Rinse, repeat.
I don't understand how fixing the situation could only include resurfacing, as now you're resurfacing a structure that's not the same as what surrounds it - the near-0-sized particles are missing and stable compaction cannot be achieved without those. So, what you're resurfacing is a moving, shaking, altering structure.
This is a huge issue here in Finland.
I suppose it depends on the environment, but I thought there was a lot of evidence showing roads with a concrete base cost significantly less long term because of the reduced maintenance cost. As well, when they do need resurfaced, it is pretty simple as the foundation will most likely still be fine.
Here in the UK, we tend to use very cheap, simple road designs, and it definitely shows. We also route all utilities under roads by default, which means that, even when you do get a nice new road surface, within a year a utility company will have been granted a licence to dig a massive trench through it and leave it with a big patch that will inevitably cause a pothole pretty soon. Madness.
The fact that we route utilities under the roads actually incentivises us to use bad road designs as the utility companies don't want to have to dig through concrete every time they have to service the infrastructure.
1:46
Grady I don't know how many rainbow roads you've driven on but I wouldn't exactly call them the pinnacles of contemporary engineering and safety. 30+ years yet they keep installing those blue shells
One of the benefits of being interested in cars, driving is almost never boring. I'll drive for hours on end and love it.
I agree also cars now are so disconnected from everything and style wise are copy and paste of one another antiques are where its at the amount of information that's sent to you though the wheel, brakes, gas, and just the butt alone makes cars much more enjoyable than new ones
in particular when you do the work on your car, driving isnt just the experience of driving but also determining the mechanical function of the work you just did or the car as a whole lol
its all fun n games until you have to doge potholes every 2 mins and im not joking
Hmm, nice that you do. But I think I could never, I'm glad I have the freedom not to take a car because everything is reachable by other, more convenient or relaxed ways of transportation. Plus clean air, high living standards, and such are just things I could never miss.
Yeh, very addictive drug.
Great video
The physical demonstration done in the glass tank was genius
I can explain exactly how potholes work in Illinois. Step 1 - Build the cheapest road possible. Step 2 - Wait for potholes to develop. Step 3 - Campaign for re-election on fixing the potholes. Step 4 - Get re-elected. Step 5 - Repair the potholes in the cheapest possible way (using one of your favorite campaign contributors). Step 6 - Wait for potholes to reappear. Step 6 - Repeat for your entire political career.
Lived in DuPage County for a bit here. I've heard the heavy salt application during snow removal also deteriorates the blacktop. True?
@@anthonyaguirre7143 yes because salt keeps water in liquid form at a lower temperature. In other words, that trapped water creates a lens that stays around for longer in the subgrade. It also means it undergoes many more freeze-thaw cycles exacerbating erosion
Step 7 - And don't forget to hug a union rep and thank them generously.
1:45
Yellow brick road: Wizard of Oz
Rainbow road: Mario Kart
yup, I had to rewind to make sure thats what I heard.
...you mean Kart, right?
...now I imagined Mario and friends racing around with shopping carts... ._.
Potholes in western PA were a constant problem in the heavy industry traffic and servere winter days from decades past. Most of the road weren't treated with tar for some reason but the few that were treated with tar held up very well. Some were tarred and sprinkled with rocks. They never got potholes.Nice explanation of the pothole process.
"I dont wake up in the morning excited to jump in the car for my morning commute"
Sounds like you need a more fun car, man.
Nahh, I love my car but I hate other drivers.. in my country is like a jungle, so I hate to drive here
This was my thought exactly. Besides a house, for most people's most expensive item is their car. You might as well care about it and enjoy it.
Public roads are generally a terrible place to have fun. Go to a closed track, an offroad park, mountain bike trail, even a winding country road, whatever. It's the difference between masturbating and having sex. To say nothing of being an asshat.
@@snigwithasword1284 if you live on the middle of downtown LA yeah.
You just gotta put some bitchin speakers in.
You can't put googly eyes on a pothole. They're soulless.
Perhaps not googly eyes but apparently you can draw a phallus on a pothole.
www.theverge.com/2015/5/2/8535259/penis-pothole-activism-wanksy-england
Have never really come across potholes in my country! The Netherlands really does make some great roads and other engineering marvels.
I actually used to get really excited before I was about to go somewhere, I just love all the engineering that goes into our roads and the vehicles we drive
"So, roadway owners spend a lot of time and money fixing them"
haha, yeah. It's a shame I live in a small city so they can't afford to fix the half-dozen potholes I have to swerve to avoid every night I'm driving home from work. Oh, but those new rustic streetlamps they put in and the crosswalk signals that nobody uses because there's like maybe three pedestrians a day sure do look really good!
Yeah well those cost thousands, road repair costs millions.
@@michaelbuckers They cost millions because of politics.
What about that dude who started spray painting dicks around the potholes? That got them fixed pretty quick, have you considered trying that?
Tell me about it! Same here - small, rural Midwestern town. Horrid side streets (main routes are maintained by the state), dilapidated homes in dying villages with less than 1300 people in them. It's all really sad and depressing, but not to the bureaucratic commissioners. They don't have to worry about getting their wittle feetsies wet when they go to the courthouse for a meeting with their fancy schmancy heated sidewalk tiles. Meanwhile, our small towns are starting to look like the seedy side of Cincinnati... ugh. :(
Mi 28 I’m not an engineer but spending millions to fix twelve (12) potholes seems like an exaggeration. But I do see your point.
@skele boner Run for mayor bro. Get some shit done in that small city
this is why i love these videos.. i started off thinking, i know how potholes form, why do we need a video on it? and halfway thru i was learning so many new things and it's logical and lovely 😌
The problem isn't that we aren't willing to pay taxes, it's the fact that we cannot choose where our taxes are going. Governments act like they are an authority over the land they span but the reality is that they should act like a service instead, that starts by allowing citizens to choose where their taxes go. WE pay with our time sacrificed to tasteless jobs and WE surrender our money because it's supposed to go for a service we should all receive.
Human nature. 3rd party purchases work that way. Basically, its not their money, so they don't care if something is insufficient or not cost effective. They also don't have to produce something you value, at a budget you can afford, in order for you to pay for it. They just sick their goons on you with g u n s if you don't wish to pay (upfront). Taxation is theft/armed robbery, no matter what noble sounding euphemisms they give it.
My company used to fix muni roads and parking lots, btw. First thing I'd ask when any project mgr or muni official called was "What are your fiscal budget requirements?" i.e. how much are you required (forced) to spend to make sure you get the same bloated, unnecessary budget next year. Then I'd say I could probably get close with about $200-$600 (depending on size of muni) leftover for you to put in petty cash, throw yourselves a much deserved office party, (probably embezzle) etc. Don't do that, don't get the job. Then we'd get interrupted 4-5 times, they'd refuse to pay standard overhead during forced down time, I'd sue them, they'd appeal multiple times which wasted more $ than they owed me, wait another year to get paid by the bankrupt jerks, end up 3-4 times over budget when they could've just not been so...Department of Redundancy Department about it all. I'd end up with slightly more profit than I'd make from the private sector, but with 1000 x's the aggrivation. The rest of the $ went to waste on lawyers and guys waiting around, not doing work. All for messing with big daddy govt. AND...your potholes would still be 2 years behind on getting fixed. So, yeah I know how corrupt the system is.
Now that you know why there's such a thing as $5000.00 govt. toilet seats and $1000.00 hammers, next time you pay taxes, send a few toilet seats and a hammer. Tell them to keep the change.
Man, I get grumpy on rain days...
Hmm
...that, or I just got old.
@Danger Bear social programs help a shit ton of ppl but go off. Also, maybe the real target should be the military?
ding ding ding. we have a winner for paying attention.
@@markcangila1613 What good is helping a segment of society when the we are all plagued by failing infrastructure? What good is a homeless shelter when there are lead pipes to replace, tunnels to repair and a bridge connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island that costs 19 dollars to cross?
The idea with republic is that you vote for people who will make the decisions you want them to, such as where to spend taxes.
"You've all experienced potholes one or twice" man here in Balkan countries there is no street without potholes. Except in highways but in Croatia the highways do have potholes
My town has potholes on every other road because our road budget is shared with two other towns tho other two both being tourists attractions so they get all the budget and we get like £1
@@steamrestorer4559 In Germany i have never seen a pothole on the Autobahn. Would be quite dangerous driving over them with like ~210 kmh lol.
Citys have some, mostly small towns.
Nah, I dont think there are potholes on Croatian highways... They are very good except one Zagreb-Osijek. Rest of highways are fine.
@@foty8679 What I like about the roads in Germany that when the holes in them are repaired the new surface is smoothed out so you cannot feel the transition between the old and new (repaired) road. While the road may look "spotty", and you can clearly see where the potholes used to be, you do not feel it while driving, it's all smooth.
I was in Croatia (Istria specifically) in January this year, I travelled on local roads 99% of the time and I must say the y were very good quality. Even the apparently less-travelled ones in the sticks, like the one I used going from Trieste to Rijeka, where I only saw two other cars during the 90 minute-trip from the Slovenian border was really nice. The next day I spent driving along some crazy winding roads consisting almost entirely of hairpin bends :), and it was OK as well. I also drove on local roads all the way to the Hungarian border and I found no reason to complain. I don't know about the southern part of your country, but the north has nothing to be ashamed of. The coastal stretch from Opatia to Zagorie was fantastic.
“Something everyone has experienced once or twice, let’s talk about potholes.”
*Laughs in Michigan*
Pure Michigan 💪
laughs in illinois
Long ago when I lived in Michigan, there was none of this vibrating compactor nonsense as in this video. They just piled the pothole high with asphalt and let the traffic do the compacting. Hopefully that is no longer the case.
1:47 Rainbows?! Someone's been playing a lot of Mario Kart lately
In Northwest Botswana the potholes are as big as the elephants that create them in the first place. The holes are as large as a jumbo jaccuzi often spanning the width of the road.
"So roadway owners spend a lot of money to fix them"
_Looks at the pothole that has been in the parking lot of our local supermarket for over a year_
I had a tire get blown out from a pothole nearly a foot deep from a parking lot.
A parking lot is not a roadway.
Haven’t seen one ever in my country. Netherlands btw and we pay about $1000 a year in road tax and pay $9 a gallon for petrol so it better be well maintained
As a professional driver, potholes are my arch nemesis, they must all be destroyed.
Or.....fixed? Wouldn’t destroying them only make them larger?
@@scallywag1716 Destroy the road. No more potholes. Just simple pools of mud and water.
professional driver, eh? is that what rideshare drivers are calling themselves these days?
@@SuperAWaC well, professional as in "it's his profession" so you just being snarky there, as we all know
As a fellow professional driver, I couldn't agree more, which is why I step on the gas pedal and run them over extra quick!
Driving isn't a dull experience imho.... especially when it's a manual.
As a paper pusher, my most fulfiling moment of the day is probably my commute.
I hate having to pay attention to the road in the morning when i'd rather be asleep. It probably depends on how congested your roads are
Sounds like you need a new job IMHO
@@SuperDeinVadda Yes, I do. But not so fast...this COVID-19 thing is no joke. I'm lucky to have a job at all. Many of my friends aren't so blessed.
commuting is dull
but driving can be fun if you drive to a new place which nice scenery
or drive a new vehicle/motorbike
depends what car you got...and manual is not fun in peak hour traffic thats for sure
I will say, having paved roadways everywhere is certainly something taken for granted. It truly is a monumental task.
I will add that the first time I bought a sports car, I did look forward to driving everyday. You don't even have to speed. Everything in the experience is enhanced.
I would also suggest *a real fancy car can enhance the driving experience too.*
And this doesn't have to be a new luxury model with every new electronic 'feature' and costing $85,000. It can as easily be a 17 year old luxury car that's still in good condition, and that still makes its driver feel special every time she / he gets behind the wheel, and might only cost $15,000. or less :)
This guys sounds like he has a phd in talking
@Benjamin McCann wow, I read that perfectly in his voice as well.
@Benjamin McCann "weird compliment but thanks?"
I love the new perspectives that you introduce in your videos. Like in this one, you had me think about how roads and sidewalks are not just _there_ ... instead, they are public works like parks and statues and government buildings whose quality is based on how much the community invests.
What are you talking about? The community does not have ownership of the roads. If we did, we wouldn't have these problems!
(although we may have other ones)
@@RobotronSage governments and cities are also communities. Or are you just watching this from the perspective that parts of the infrastructure is owned by people who donated money to build something? That is something that mostly exists in US and is not a general thing. And, as I said, those are not the only kinds of communities
Long ago, when most roads were dirt, each village would have an assortment of craftsmen. Blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers, potters etc. Sometimes, when asked to make a pot, the potter would look for the most finely pulverized clay around and often find it in the wagon ruts of a nearby road. When he dug up the clay for his pot the hole he left was called a POTHOLE. I really enjoy your content Grady.
7:40 I don't know how it is in the US but in Australia it's a major part of our engineering education.
i love driving, it's my favorite way to travel
i'm always excited whenever i have to drive to somewhere, whether it's short or long distances
i know i'm not the only one ...
Me too, but I hate when the streets are really busy
Driving is wack as fuck I hate it. Probably because I don’t trust other people.
Imagine how good the roads would be if the government was required to pay for any vehicle damage caused by potholes and other road defects
Imagine how much insurance fraud that will cause
@@cgiunta6542 Then imagine if we had a government who’s willing to take prevention action to stop the insurance fraud. Then again, the US loves to throw money into dumpster fires just to watch the fire grow
@@cgiunta6542 there wouldn't be any insurance fraud relating to that because I guarantee the roads would be in perfect condition if the government was responsible for vehicle damage caused by poorly designed/maintained roads
Imagine if you were the one who pay governement to repair the roads ?
@@justeunfan3364 but if they had to pay to repair vehicle damage caused by bad road maintenance, you'd at least be getting something for your tax dollars
"Politicians, government officials... drive on the same road as everyone else" Hahahaha that was a good one, I'm crying
he wanted to mean...they fly over them, lol.
@@mehmetyok8434 in the USA?
@@synthmark7687 Turkey
It's true.
Love the Sea Cliff Bridge in Wollongong, Australia at the beginning. Spectacular! 🇦🇺
Glad to know what that is.
Spotted it immediately haha
@@khajiitkitten5679 Any Illawarra pleb knows of this bridge
how appropriate that this showed up in my feed today. It's spring, and there are a lot of potholes gradually being uncovered as the snow melts. Now we've had another snowstorm and temperatures dropped below freezing again, so a lot of water probably froze underneath the tarmac, giving us even more potholes when it warms back up.
“How do potholes work”
Ask my local government, they’ll give you exactly 0 real answers
Could be worse, my local council is in the process of approving a set of new speed bumps to actively make the road worse
Could be worse, imagine they approved a speed camera.
Dont be so quick to judge. They work harder than people think. And deal with many unreasonable people on a daily basis.
How to fill a pothole
🇮🇳: Let the monsoon rain do it.
As someone who rides a motorcycle a lot, pot holes are my number 2 fear.
A middle aged Karen on her mobile while driving a minivan full of screaming kids is my number 1 fear. Oh and all while she is smoking a cigarette
"How do potholes work" are you telling me they deliberately made potholes to work on destroying my car? damned conspiracy! i knew it!
Potholes : *exist*
Drivers ; "what a bummer"
Cysclists: *exist*
Potholes : "I"m about to end this man's whole career"
theyre easy to dodge on a bike tho right?
@@knuppel8875 they are, to some extent. I hit a pothole on a descending false-flat, i braked as soon as i saw it but still hit it at around 45km/h(28mph), my wheels went wobbly. If i hadn't braked i migth not be here typing this comment.
@@knuppel8875 I've smashed potholes going between 10-40mph on my bike, every time is a different experience from slightly annoying to holy shit I'm going to crash.
This meme is so stale that if I tried to take a bite, I'd chip a tooth.
@@screwbles5697 Engineering channels attract the old guys. Curious, smart, but a bit out of date!
That’s crazy because ALL I look forward to in the morning, at work, or even out wit friends, is the moment I get to get behind the wheel. My favorite part of any day. Driving provides me with clarity and focus like nothing else does
What planet are you from
@@jeffjeff8750 same one as you but I jus have no friends 😎
0:42 hahahahaha "once or twice" you're funny as hell
“From yellow bricks to rainbows” right on :D
I hope this video remains publically available and doesn't get hidden or deleted. I find this kind of content absolutely fascinating.
"Cars and trucks are heavy and they pass over the road at rapid speed"
This is the kind of wisdom you won't find anywhere else on RUclips
Don't trust everything you hear on the internet. He didn't cite any sources for that statement.
I feel that it is sometimes necessary for me to hear the absolute obvious so as to get into the 'state' or 'flow' and be more comfortable with the speaker. A gentle and calming voice also helps :)
This is almost as good as my favorite channel, impractical engineering
I was an engineer at the site of a new road, when we were done I took a crew with what remained of the asphalt around town and hot-patched as many potholes as I could find.
and thank you for that
1:44 building a road from rainbows. A Mario Kart 64 reference 😄
I came expecting to learn A LOT about potholes.
I wasn't disappointed!
Man! The amount of facts behind such a simple thing is amazing! I knew they were created by water but never thought about ice (it doesn't snow where I live).
0:41 Once or twice? In my country I experience these things on a daily basis.
Him: cars have huge differences in driving between offroad and in the road
Me: [laughing nervously in bicycles]
"... Politicians have a vested interest in good roads..." 👀
over here, government bureaucrats and politicians buy themselves larger SUVs instead of fixing the roads 🇺🇬
same here in Syria lmaoo
In Battle creek Mi we are putting down new roads with no base so our 3 year old road has cracks and potholes.
Before anything else.
This is the first time hearing about potholes working.
The slight giggle when you repeated the old riddle 'the only thing that gets bigger the more you take away", was everything