If there's one thing every driver hates, it's potholes. Whether it's having to swerve to avoid them, or finding yourself forced to pay out a hefty chunk of cash for repairs after driving over them, they're a problem all of us could do without.
According to the RAC, pothole-related repairs cost drivers an average of £320 each time - with some paying more than £1,000 to fix damage caused to tyres, suspension, and steering. Ahead of National Pothole Day on Thursday, price comparison site Go.Compare has revealed it is taking as long as 209 days in some areas of the UK for potholes to be filled in, meaning drivers have to be on high alert.
And now one driving instructor has demonstrated a useful trick for avoiding the annoying hazards. In a YouTube video, Ros from Cheltenham-based Drive School of Motoring showed how you can avoid driving over potholes simply by paying attention to your steering wheel.
Opening the video, she said: "It's pothole season, which is horrendous, so I'm going to give you a reference point in this video so you can avoid potholes."
Before demonstrating the trick Ros laid out some important safety advice. "You can only use this if it's safe to do so," she said.
"I'm afraid to tell you if there's cars around or other road users around, sometimes you're going to have to go through the pothole so you don't crash into a car, ok?
"But if it's just you and a pothole all alone and it's safe to do so, you can use this as a reference point, which is excellent, but please know that cars and other road users are more important than the pothole.
"You mustn't go 'right I'm going to use my reference point' irrespective of whether there's a car coming, because you'll crash."
Showing how the trick works, Ros said drivers should aim to line up the pothole with a certain point on the steering wheel. "We're gonna cut the steering wheel up into pieces and you're going to want to put the pothole on a certain part of the steering wheel if it's safe to do so," she said.
She showed the part in question by asking viewers to imagine the steering wheel cut in half vertically, and then the left section cut in half again, with that point being where the pothole should be lined up. "That's where you're going to want to put the pothole if it is safe to do so and there is no one around," she said.
Reiterating her safety advice, Ros added: "Please, please, please, I want to stress again that you can only do this if you're on your own with the pothole. It's something that you can just add to your toolkit of driving."
Concluding, she said: "Sometimes if there's a pothole, because of other users you're going to have go through it, which is horrible. So, just reduce your speed down to make sure that the damage to your car is the least that it can be."
Potholes are formed when water gets into cracks in the road and freezes, expanding in size and causing the crack to grow bigger. If you spot a pothole, you should report it to the local authority responsible for maintaining the road in question.
But a study by Go.Compare has found the amount of time it takes councils to fix potholes varies wildly, from just over a day in some areas, to as much as 209 days in others.