IS it just me or are the roads around here appalling?

I fear for my car’s suspension every time I turn off a major road. Side roads and many country roads seem to be booby trapped with holes.

To negotiate them without hitting any means doing a slalom, a motoring manoeuvre not looked upon kindly by police nor to be attempted if anything is coming from the opposite direction.

Those humps called sleeping policemen are bad enough. I accept the intention is to slow traffic in urban areas to stay within the 30mph limit, but some of them are so steep they can only be attempted at 15mph.

Travelling on the top deck of a bus with a driver eager to make up time must be better than a fairground ride.

But if the authorities actually want us to drive at 15mph then they should pass a law and put up a sign saying so. Using fat sleeping policemen rather than ones with a normal girth is introducing speed limits by stealth. And obesity.

Holes and speed bumps don’t bother some cars. Expensive 4x4s are rugged enough to take them as easy as a mountain stream or have a wide enough wheel base that they can negotiate single bumps without touching the side.

Bur for ordinary cars they can be lethal. I blame my bent back end on road conditions. And, believe me, if you bend your back end it’s no laughing matter.

This happened some years ago when I drove a Fiat Punto, a neat and nippy town car – until the back end fell out. I asked a friend at Kirklees if I could sue the council and he laughed so long his pint went flat.

Let me make it clear, as I have many times before, that I have no complaints about speed limits. I try to keep within them even when the road is wide, clear and empty and I have an impatient motorist behind me flashing his lights and making finger gestures to his head to question my sanity.

But the holes in the road are becoming as bad as they are in rural Ireland, a country with a great sense of humour but no money where every car over a few years old has a list to port because of all the holes at the side of every country road that you have to bounce down to avoid the tractor coming towards you.

I have a radical suggestion to the road problem. Why don’t we remove all the speed bumps and sleeping PCs and use them to fill in all the holes.

Surely traffic signs and speed cameras can do the rest and I won’t continually be worried about my back end.