It’s fair to say that most women in their mid 20s are spending the best years of their lives drinking rum cocktails and going on Tinder dates.
I, meanwhile, email my local council about potholes, then go and write a column about the entire debacle.
But a debacle it is. There are probably roads in rural Namibia that are safer to drive on than some in Huddersfield.
You haven’t thoroughly experienced driving in this town (and what an experience it is, too) until you’ve winced at that sickening lurch as you hit a crater at 40mph, before crouching at the side of the B6108 inspecting the damage and vowing angrily to write to the council.
It’ll come as no shock to you to know road maintenance in England and Wales is underfunded by £1bn every year.
It’s a staggering figure and one that makes you think about the gleaming state our roads would be in if the cash was made available. But data shows that if it was it would take councils up to 14 years to catch up.
In the meantime, around 30,000 compensation claims for vehicle damage are submitted to authorities each year.
The thing is, the shocking state of Huddersfield’s roads is about more than just doing your alloys in. It’s actually a huge safety issue.
My ageing grandparents live at the bottom of a rural beaten track in Emley that is so crater-ridden there is an inter-connected community of underwater eco-systems thriving in it. Some taxis refuse to brave it and ambulances have struggled to get down it which is pretty worrying considering my grandfather is 87 and has already had a few hospital trips.
"There are probably roads in rural Namibia that are safer to drive on than some in Huddersfield."
The Department for Transport revealed last year that around 50 cyclists were seriously injured or even killed each year in accidents related to poor road maintenance.
Then there are the drivers themselves. Some routes are so poor motorists zig-zag about, often veering onto the wrong side just to navigate around holes big enough for a badger to take a bubble bath in.
On rural winding routes this could easily lead to a tragedy.
So if authorities really are as health and safety mad as the right wing press would have us believe, why is more funding not allocated to tackle such a risk to public safety? Why spend millions on building more roads when the state of existing ones beggar belief as it is?
In defence of the Government, a £100m repair fund was set aside last month to send to local authorities to tackle the increasingly appalling road conditions. That’s on top of £75m offered by the Pothole Action Fund and £46m for highways authorities.
True, there are bigger issues facing this country today than a few holes in the roads. And I am aware that this column will make me sound like the kind of person who spends their weekends trawling the Holme Valley with a tape measure and notebook, logging the geo-location and size of every cavity (only on Sundays - I do have a life).
Every issue costs money to resolve in some way, but can you really put a price on safety?
