Scooter rider hospitalised after hitting pothole

A scooter driver was rushed to hospital after he collided with a "lethal" pothole, which left him needing stitches.

"One minute everything was fine, the next I'm staring at the tarmac and not able to get up," said George Balkwill, 32, from Oxford.

He was riding a Voi hired e-scooter along Oxford Road at around 18:00 GMT on Saturday, just outside the Red Lion pub in Old Marston, when he hit the hole which was obscured by rainwater.

An Oxford City Council spokesman said the pothole had been scheduled for repair but had "deteriorated since it was first inspected".

Balkwill said "it all happened so quickly" and he was left "feeling cold" with "quite a lot of blood".

He added that he was grateful that some people from the pub came out to help him and called an ambulance.

"They were beyond kind and helpful, one of them put a blanket on me," he said.

He said there was added insult to injury when he received an automated message from Voi telling him "you can't park here" while he was recovering at the location of the crash.

Balkwill said he required stitches in his chin and remains unable to speak properly because of the swelling.

He said he has had to take time off of work to recover and is concerned about the impact it has had on his appearance.

He said he has used scooters for years without any accidents but will now think twice about using one.

He has since measured the hole and found it was 140mm (14cm) deep and he believes it would "cause serious problems to a large 4x4 vehicle, let alone a scooter".

He called it "negligence" by the local authority adding "we're no longer able to trust our council to correctly identify hazards on the road".

"This will happen again," he said.

Remembering the incident, Diana Wiley, the landlady for the Red Lion said: "A lady come in screaming, somebody's fell in the pothole."

She said six of them went out to help and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth but they were reluctant to move him because his neck and back were in pain.

She described the pothole as "lethal" and said it has been filled in twice this year.

She added that throughout the village it is "a bit of a state" but the council has not responded to her complaints.

"It's disgusting isn't it," she said.

"Why arent they filling in these bloody holes?"

Nigel Chapman, cabinet member for citizen focused services and council companies, said: "We fully recognise the frustration residents feel about the condition of some of the city's roads.

"This particular pothole was inspected by [council facilities management company] ODS on 3 February.

"At that time, it was assessed as a category two defect, which carries a 28-day repair timeframe.

"The repair was scheduled for today and will have been completed within 14 days of being raised — well within the required timescale."

He said weather and traffic "cause defects to worsen quickly, which is why timely reporting and scheduled repairs are so important".

"Since April 2025, more than 3,000 defects on the city's roads and pathways have been repaired," he added.

"We currently have three times the usual number of repair teams out across the city addressing potholes as quickly as possible."

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