'I lost three tyres in one week to potholes'

You hear the gut-wrenching thud as your car hits an unavoidable pothole.

This is something nearly all drivers have experienced, what follows are the nervous checks hoping no damage has been caused.

John Smyth knows better than most just what the outcome can be.

In December, he lost two tyres after hitting a pothole, he replaced these but just one week later he hit another pothole and damaged another tyre.

It's an expensive process that has left Smyth feeling both angry and nervous at the thought of driving.

"I would not feel safe on the roads at this moment in time, it's very frustrating.

"When you hit them, the impact is quite severe," he said.

Unfortunately, Smyth's situation isn't unique.

Ask any driver for their thoughts on potholes and chances are you will be met with a disgruntled story of damage or near misses.

Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins said about 49,000 road defects have been recorded in Northern Ireland in the last three months.

She said she asked department officials to "maximise our available workforce capacity to ensure we are doing as much as we can, as quickly as possible".

Last week her department - which is in charge of maintaining the roads - allocated almost £8m to help deal with the problem.

But with one mechanic telling BBC News NI that he sometimes deals with up to 10 people a day who have damaged their vehicles on potholes, is the pothole saga becoming a pandemic?

Smyth, from Mayobridge, said he is now constantly on the lookout for potholes, something the poor weather can make increasingly difficult.

His advice to others in the same position is to take photographs of the pothole and your tyre, and then send as much detail as possible about the location where the damage was caused.

Smyth believes the department "isn't doing enough" to tackle the issue.

He described repair work to any reported potholes as a "patch-up job".

"It's not done properly. It's just something thrown in the hole and just covered up.

"A few months later, back to square one again," he added.

He said as someone paying road tax he's "very angry at the system".

It's not just the famous routes around the Mourne Mountains that are plagued by potholes.

Wilson Beggs lives on the Ballycorr Road in Ballyclare, although he said that to call it a road "is stretching the imagination".

The road, he said, "wasn't great whenever I moved here. It's terrible now".

"There are so many potholes and people are trying to avoid the potholes and probably not giving oncoming traffic as much attention as it should be getting, but just nobody seems interested in doing anything about this," he said.

"There were two or three potholes just beside the entrance to the nursing home that were filled in December," he said. "But they are completely gone again."

"They're using a sticking plaster on something that needs major surgery. It's a waste of money."

He added that on one section "the gullies at the side of that road are now sitting above the level of the road, so when we get heavy rain, like we had a couple of weeks ago, those gullies do not take the water".

"I did actually report that to the department over a year ago. Nothing was done about it," he said.

"Residents here are fed up with it. We're just being ignored."

According to the motoring organisation RAC, there are more than one million potholes in the UK so it's not a local problem.

But the local pictures shows a serious problem - figures from 2024 show there were about 120,000 road defects and potholes recorded in Northern Ireland from January to November of that year.

There is a dedicated website, where road users have to fill in a number of details.

The AA recommends drivers and cyclists avoid potholes where it is safe to do so, but when there is no other option than to pass over them, reduce speed and keep an increased distance from nearby vehicles. They also advise drivers to keep two hands on the wheel to allow for maximum control.