When it comes to potholes, there’s a bit of wisdom from Jim Major, Concord’s former, now-retired highways superintendent, that holds true: To drivers, every year is worse than normal.
This year, for example, I’ve driven through potholes that rivaled geological sinkholes and had to weave along roads like a video-gamer avoiding Mario Kart obstacles to save my car’s suspension. It’s definitely worse than normal, right?
Not much if at all, according to the Concord city database. From Jan. 1 to March 16, city crews filled 1,309 potholes. Over the same period last year, they filled 1,262 of them. This year’s tally is 3% higher than in 2025, which seems to me small enough to fall within the margin of error.
But, you ask, what about all the potholes they haven’t filled?
Angelina Zulkic, the city’s communications coordinator, looked at data from the online portals residents use to report issues, including potholes.
People reported 56 potholes through March 15, 2025, while over that period this year they reported 113 potholes. That’s just over a 100% increase, so maybe this year really is worse.
Zulkic offers another possibility.
“I think the increase in reports this year is because more people are becoming aware of our SeeClickFix reporting tool and MyConcordNH mobile app,” she wrote in an email response to my questions. She notes that she did a social media post on March 12 about reporting potholes, which led to 33 requests. “I don’t think I did any social media outreach last year around pothole season.”
Frankly, I was surprised at how few potholes had been reported online, since I assumed the city would be swamped with information from irritated commuters. But crews filled 10 times as many potholes as people reported.
“As you can see though, crews are very active about repairing potholes and aren’t waiting for requests to come in,” Zulkic wrote.
Hitting a bad pothole at high speed can do a number on tires and car parts. In theory, Concord and any other municipality can be held liable if a vehicle is damaged by a pothole the city should have fixed, but this rarely happens in practice.
State law (RSA 231:90 through 231:92a, part of the section titled General Municipal Liability) discusses obligation to repair “insufficiencies” in sidewalks and roads but says liability occurs only if municipalities “had actual notice or knowledge of the insufficiency and were grossly negligent or exercised bad faith in responding or failing to respond.”
That’s a pretty wide loophole. Even if a bad stretch of street that was reported on SeeClickFix but not repaired should wipe out your car, it will take a lot of legal action to get any compensation.
As you probably know, potholes are created by the freeze-thaw cycle during winter and worsened by vehicles passing over them.
When ice and snow melts, water flows into cracks in the surface of a paved street, which is why crews spend a lot of time dribbling asphalt sealant over road cracks. When the temperature falls at night, the water in those cracks freezes and expands. (Water is the only common material that gets bigger when it freezes. ) Vehicles drive over these small problems and make them bigger, allowing more water to enter during the next thaw, and the cycle repeats itself.
Potholes are a very localized problem. If your street has been recently paved, gets little heavy traffic and has a good base to support the pavement, you probably don’t have potholes. If your street is languishing on the city’s priority list, is favored by 6,000-pound SUVs or dump trucks and was originally a layer of asphalt laid over a dirt road without reconstruction of the roadbed, then you’re probably driving 15 miles an hour slower than usual right now to avoid a bunch of craters.
Of course, driving more slowly is safer and it saves gas, so maybe potholes aren’t entirely a bad thing — a type of traffic calming device. Maybe, but don’t try telling that to drivers cursing as they bounce along Fort Eddy Road; they won’t be sympathetic.