Are People Dumber than a Pothole?

airbiscuit · Mar 26, 2020

Our friends have a cabin on a lake. It used to be a resort with 9 cabins. It has a 1/3 mile driveway on sandy ground and it is straight and pretty flat. Eight of the cabin owners are from the cities. The road is actually in pretty good shape, but they fret over a few potholes.

And yet.....

They drive down the same ruts, even though the road is wide enough to move 4' or so left or right so it isn't two ruts. Most importantly, they keep driving through potholes when they have standing water (even though there is room to drive around them). They have the POA bring in a 1/2 load of gravel and spread it around here and there, but the potholes return.

They think the sky is falling and keep driving through the potholes. Just to prove how simple the remedy is, I took a shovel and 5 gal bucket, and filled the potholes with dirt from the side of the road and thus made a channel for future water to drain. The city folks were astonished to learn that the issue had been remedied so easily (and cheaply).

And yet ...

They keep driving down the same two ruts, and potholes if they reappear.

Are they trainable? (the people, not the potholes)

JerryK · Mar 26, 2020

Sadly, I think the answer is no .....

k0ua · Mar 26, 2020

A person can be "smart". "People", are literally dumber than dirt.

Industrial Toys · Mar 26, 2020

We have had this place since 67. I lived here 30 something years and don't think I have ever driven in the center of the driveway. I don't even know what that would be like.

oosik · Mar 26, 2020

I have a mile long gravel driveway. Every spring I have an 80' section that gets muddy. My son comes to visit and bitches about the muddy spot. I've given up listening to him and asking why he doesn't just drive around the muddy spot. OH, NO - he would rather drive right thru the mud and *****. The driveway is plenty wide enough to drive around this spot.

BTW - I don't let him use my garden hose to wash the mud off anymore. You choose to drive thru it - you take it home to wash it off.

Diggin It · Mar 26, 2020

airbiscuit said:
Are they trainable? (the people, not the potholes)

Good thing you clarified, cuz, ya' know ...

fried1765 · Mar 26, 2020

Industrial Toys said:
We have had this place since 67. I lived here 30 something years and don't think I have ever driven in the center of the driveway. I don't even know what that would be like.

It only took a couple of trys to teach my wife (city girl) that the smart way is to alternate sides.

BrokenTrack · Mar 27, 2020

When I was working in MN on a temporary basis, there was an accident on the main road leading to the company, and all these people showed up late. We came from the same direction, and so we asked, "why didn't you drive out around", and they said, "They did not know they could."

These people LIVED there, yet had taken the same way to work for so many years, that they never thought they could go a different way. We did not live there, and yet we realized a left, a right, and a right got us back to the main highway again.

Crazy not to know that.

Still, if a person has pot holes and mud in their road every year, then it is more about the road not having drainage than people being unwilling to drive around the potholes. They either have to get ditches to drain the water, or build the road surface up. Potholes form because of standing water.

The only exception to standing water causing potholes, is parkinglots where backing occurs. As vehicles...mostly trucks, swivel their front tires to jockey into position, they auger holes as they steer and are not moving. That will soon auger a pothole into the gravel parkinglot. There is not much hope for that except paving the area.

ruffdog · Mar 27, 2020

Sometimes city folk (or others) need a trail or path to follow. Get them in a open field sometime, they get lost with no tire tracks to follow.

Ken · Mar 27, 2020

Our Church is on a county line road. so when ever the gravel road needs grading one or the other judges gets it done.
Then the state re-built the highway and removed a large oak tree and paved over the stump hole. so now vehicles soon developed a large pot hole . Water stands in hole the year around. when it gets so deep the state says it is on the county line and so the judges are to fix.
One time called the judge and asked it could get a load of gravel since we were running out of VW's to fill in. the next day several county trucks grader and road roller were working the problem . now years later the stump continues to rot away and hole still forming. under the black topped road.
How much of a problem to have removed the stump at time of state road widening. it isn't just people that are dumb.