Our infrastructure is generally garbage. Some states have it so bad that bridges crack and potholes ruin cars. But some roads are worse than others. Which state has the worst roads?
Roads here in Illinois are pretty decent until you get into Chicago, then they become tire-eating, wheel-bending minefields. Chicago’s potholes are so chaotically bad that hitting one sounds like setting off an explosion and sometimes results in an instantly ruined alignment.
And yet, Chicago’s roads don’t hold a candle to what you see elsewhere in the country.
The minefields that pass for roads in Michigan are really up there. WDIV Local 4 set up a camera next to a pothole in Warren, Michigan, a few years ago. They captured car after car after car getting absolutely trashed. The wild report is narrated by none other than Detroit’s own charismatic Top Gear-style presenter, Tim Pamplin:
I think we’ve said it before but we’ll say it again: We definitely stan Tim Pamplin.
But if a single pothole annihilating a line of cars isn’t convincing enough, how about a pothole that causes cars to lose control? That pothole managed to be such a menace that WDIV Local 4 caught it in action, too:
That one was so bad that it even disrupted passing semi trucks. The real highlight is watching the worker fill in the pothole by using their shovel to launch asphalt from the side of the road. My Michigan-based coworkers assure me that crumbling roads are a constant headache, especially in the Spring.
Thankfully, neither of these chaos-causing potholes caused any major crashes, but it makes me wonder how much worse can it get. Show us what you got. What states have the worst roads? Is your state’s infrastructure rusted out, cracking and falling apart?