The Environment Pothole Dilemma

The Environment Pothole Dilemma By Dale Jodoin If you live in Oshawa or Toronto, you know the feeling. You’re driving along, maybe listening to the radio, when bang! you slam into a pothole. The wheel jolts, your coffee spills, and your heart skips a beat. You curse under your breath and keep going, but that crater in the pavement is doing more harm than you think. Most people see potholes as a driver’s problem. A flat tire, a bent rim, or a suspension bill that makes your bank account ache. But potholes do something else, something most folks never think about. They make vehicles burn more energy. Gas cars guzzle more fuel when they slam into one. Electric cars drain their batteries faster. Both lose efficiency. That means more pollution in the air for everyone. And it doesn’t stop there. Drivers slow down for potholes, then stomp the pedal to speed back up. That constant stop-and-go wastes energy. It’s like trying to drink through a straw full of holes you lose more than you take in. In a big city with millions of vehicles, all those wasted bursts of energy pile up into a big, invisible problem. Scientists have been looking at this. A 2023 study by Ali and his team showed that potholes mess with traffic flow, forcing drivers to brake and accelerate more. That burns extra fuel. Oregon’s Department of Transportation found that rough roads increase fuel use and CO₂. Chun, in 2024, studied electric cars and found that rough pavement makes them suck down power faster. Even motorcycles aren’t safe. The more they slam into potholes, the quicker they break down, and every new part of steel, rubber, plastic has its own environmental cost. And then there’s density. The more packed a city is, the faster the pavement wears out. Heavy traffic pounds the asphalt until it crumbles. More potholes mean more slowing, more idling, more wasted fuel. A 2025 study by Wang showed that cities with higher density already have worse emissions because of traffic. Add potholes and the air gets even dirtier. That’s smog, exhaust, and fine dust in the lungs of everyone walking, biking, or just trying to breathe. Now, potholes are serious, but you’ve got to laugh sometimes or you’ll go crazy. Here’s one: Why don’t potholes ever get lonely? Because they’ve always got a whole lot of friends. Or how about this one: What did the car say to the pothole? “You crack me up.” Funny until your alignment bill shows up in the mail. But jokes aside, the truth is potholes aren’t just breaking cars. They’re breaking climate goals too. Governments love to talk about Net Zero by 2050, but how can we ever get there if our roads look like Swiss cheese? A pothole filled today is back next spring. Water seeps in, freezes, expands, and cracks the pavement again. It’s like patching jeans that already have holes in the knees. You'll be back with the sewing kit before long. Meanwhile, the damage piles up. Every bump means more gas burned, more electricity drained, more pollution in the air. And it costs money. Billions every year across North America are spent fixing cars, patching pavement, and dealing with the fallout. That’s money that could go into real, long-lasting road fixes. Stronger asphalt, better drainage, even new materials that can take the pounding. But too often, leaders take the cheap route: patch it, pave it, forget it, and then do it all again the next year. And let’s not forget the human side. Everyone’s got a pothole story. The coffee stain on your shirt. The kid in the back seat was crying because their juice box exploded. The poor soul who ate the wrong burrito for lunch and then hit a pothole too hard. It’s funny in a miserable kind of way. Potholes aren’t just an inconvenience. They get under our skin, into our wallets, and into the air we breathe. If cities really care about emissions, potholes need to be treated as more than a nuisance. They’re an environmental problem hiding in plain sight. Smoother roads mean cleaner air. It’s that simple. Investing in durable, sustainable road systems may cost more at first, but it saves money and pollution down the line. Every unfilled pothole is another leak in the climate plan. Potholes may look small, but they’re not. They’re cracks in the system. They waste fuel, they pollute the air, and they chip away at every promise governments make about a green future. We laugh about them, we curse at them, and we swerve around them, but they aren’t going anywhere unless someone takes this seriously. So here’s the truth: potholes aren’t just destroying cars. They’re destroying our climate goals. If we don’t fix the holes in our streets, we’ll never fix the holes in our climate promises. And unless cities wake up, the environmental pothole dilemma will swallow us whole.