Jeremy Clarkson blasts Britain's roads as being 'Madagascar bad' - 'We've learned to accept it'

The new Labour Government has pledged to fix an additional one million potholes per year using billions of pounds available in the Potholes Fund to repair roads.

However, before councils and local authorities can get shovels in the round, Jeremy Clarkson has slammed the state of roads across the UK after an eventful journey.

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In the last week, Clarkson travelled 50 miles to visit presenting partner Richard Hammond but lamented that the journey took almost two hours to complete.

He noted that the first 20 minutes were spent trying to turn off various noises coming from his modern Mercedes including the speed limiter.

Clarkson, 64, added that he resorted to using duct tape to cover the visual warnings coming up on the dashboard.

The former Top Gear host was forced to embark on a number of detours along the short journey caused by roadworks, joking that the roads on the M50 to Hereford were "Madagascar bad".

He added: "To try to avoid the road closures and potholes full of dinosaurs, I chose a different route, and having passed Tewkesbury, which for the first time in living memory wasn’t underwater, I arrived in Cheltenham where, guess what? One of the roads was closed.

"I was on a main road and the red traffic lights ahead were completely obscured by overhanging branches. That never used to happen. It does now. And we’ve learned to accept it," he told The Sun.

Clarkson said he would have used navigation apps on his phone after the built-in sat nav caused him issues along smaller roads in the countryside but said a few issues prevented him from doing so.

The Grand Tour presenter said the country was "full of Cycling Mikey vigilantes" who "prowled the streets" looking for drivers using their phones.

He continued, saying that Britons were now forced to accept that trains wouldn't arrive on time, motorways would be closed and airports would be disrupted by environmental protest groups like Just Stop Oil.

Clarkson concluded: "I wonder, though, how much longer will we put up with the collapse of the country before something is done."

Data from the RAC shows that patrols attended almost 8,000 breakdowns in the first quarter of the year that were due to poor road surfaces - a staggering 53 per cent increase compared to previous years.

In 2023, the RAC attended almost 30,000 breakdowns for faults including broken suspension springs, damaged shock absorbers and distorted wheels, many of which came from potholes.

The motoring organisation added that only 81 English county and district councils responded to FOI requests, confirming that there were 556,658 potholes in 2021/22.

However, it estimated that the actual total for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be "two or three times higher" than the number reported.

It is estimated that between 2022 and 2023, 1.4 million potholes were filled in England and Wales, although this is a drop of around 300,000 compared to the previous year.

Simon Williams, head of policy for the RAC, said that drivers had avoided the worst of the pothole plague in recent years thanks to the absence of sub-zero temperatures.

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The 2023 Spring Budget saw the Government pledge an extra £200million for local authorities to repair potholes.

Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt estimated that the increase in funding would fix the equivalent of up to four million additional potholes across England.