Brian Otten likens his process for dealing with road problems to a triage system.
As the highway engineer in Perry County in southern Illinois, Otten says he gets calls about potholes or cracked drainage pipes.
“And we’ll go out there and take a look and say, this pipe is about fall in and somebody could have an accident here and really get hurt. That takes precedence over the inconvenience of a pothole,” he said.
Problems on interstate highways and bridges get a lot of attention. But you may be seeing more potholes and cracks on the roads you take to work or even live on, particularly in rural areas.