In SE Michigan the roads are usually bad. It's just part of life. Last winter it reached a new level of bad though. The most common roadside casualties I saw were (often newer cars) with flat tires and bent/broken rims from pothole encounters. I don't remember seeing that before. I'm going to go ahead and assume the current trend toward giant wheels and low profile rubber has something to do with it.
The giant blingy OE wheel trend drives me nuts.
BlueInGreen44 wrote: In SE Michigan the roads are usually bad. It's just part of life. Last winter it reached a new level of bad though. The most common roadside casualties I saw were (often newer cars) with flat tires and bent/broken rims from pothole encounters. I don't remember seeing that before. I'm going to go ahead and assume the current trend toward giant wheels and low profile rubber has something to do with it. The giant blingy OE wheel trend drives me nuts.
Agreed. A lot of the potential successors to my DD that I have been looking at have 19" or 20" wheels (for instance, the Mazda 6, Dodge Challenger/Charger, Mustang, etc). I guess a second set of smaller diameter wheels and tires with snow/offroad rubber will be absolutely necessary for the winter.
Pennsylvania has crappy roads. There are no two ways around it. I have driven two lowered vehicles in the past and I will never do it again. Too much punishment between speed bumps, dips in the road and potholes. My Mazda 5 has a good suspension and it handles the bad roads pretty well except for one tire last winter.
Roads in North Carolina are ok to really good depending on the area. It does help that we don't get frequent snow. However, my county must be an average income county because the gov't refuses to fix some of the big potholes in some of the roads, it's irritating. All the while Republicans scream against raising taxes so the roads can't get repaired.
In reply to Mr_Clutch42: If it's anything like MD, they use the roads as an excuse to raise taxes, but the roads never improve after they raise taxes.
I've been in Northern Virginia (DC suburbs) for a year and road maintenance is amazingly good. No patches on patches here: miles and miles of 8 and 10 lane interstate were ripped up almost overnight this summer. The major interstates are billiard table smooth again. I pay a fair amount in tax, but I can see what I'm getting. And I love it :)
BlueInGreen44 wrote: In SE Michigan the roads are usually bad. It's just part of life. Last winter it reached a new level of bad though. The most common roadside casualties I saw were (often newer cars) with flat tires and bent/broken rims from pothole encounters. I don't remember seeing that before. I'm going to go ahead and assume the current trend toward giant wheels and low profile rubber has something to do with it. The giant blingy OE wheel trend drives me nuts.
You're understating it. Some of the highways were so bad last winter that a few people lost axles, like the whole thing ripped off the chassis, springs and all.
93EXCivic wrote: Huntsville and Alabama in general has fairly good roads. The worst roads I have been on are in New Orleans and I have been to Honduras. E36 M3ty doesn't even start to describe them. I was down there this weekend and I swear they are getting worse.
I live here and they are getting worse.
Grizz wrote: In reply to Mr_Clutch42: If it's anything like MD, they use the roads as an excuse to raise taxes, but the roads never improve after they raise taxes.
Anywhere I've ever driven in Maryland, the roads hardly could improve. MD takes fantastic care of their roads in most cases, and they are building a new planet's worth of big, high-volume interchanges up and down the I-95 corridor. Out west, they are nothing to sneeze at, either.
True story: I live right near the confluence of DE/PA/MD. Rt 896, the main north-south 2-lane thoroughfare, happens to jog through the very tippiest tip of MD. It's literally less than 100 yards of the road that's in Maryland, but it gets paved, striped, and plowed more frequently than the parts on either side of it, which are both main routes for DE and PA.
We have really bad roads around here and people still drive little Japanese cars, but that's because it's not so easy to afford a crossover. Crossovers are a very popular body style for new cars, but compacts and especially EVs are more popular. People still slam their rides and scrape on everything. Saw a new speedbump, way taller than it needed to be as usual, with huge gashes in it from lowered cars driving over it.
Tire and rim damage is common though, and suspension parts don't last long.
I haven't really noticed many issues with roads where I usually drive here in NC or in MN where I go for work.
T.J. wrote: I haven't really noticed many issues with roads where I usually drive here in NC or in MN where I go for work.
I assume you're excluding the I-35W bridge collapse that killed 13 people in MN.
Rupert wrote:T.J. wrote: I haven't really noticed many issues with roads where I usually drive here in NC or in MN where I go for work.I assume you're excluding the I-35W bridge collapse that killed 13 people in MN.
Not a Crossover.
In reply to Grizz: You need to vote out those politicians, then. In my state, the state tax on gas is the highest in the southeast, so our roads should be the best maintained.
We had an IS300 sport cross...(225/45/17 and 245/45/17) had to buy a few tires... and one incident cost 2 wheels, 2 tires, and parts of the front and rear suspension... damage on I5 in Portland... total cost for the insurance man... $5700 
Now we have older smaller cars.. one uses 14" wheels 195/60/14, and the other uses 15" wheels 195/50/15. Part of the advantage in running older cars is they are smaller... so avoiding something in your lane is far easier when the car only takes up 65% of the lane.
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