New potholes, large mounds of gravel and dust at the bottom of hills and on the bypass, diesel spills, and obviously slippery surfaces covered in full gloss white paint. This is what I encounter in the morning on my way to work.

I, like many others, ride a motorcycle as my main means of transport. We don’t ride bikes only on a sunny Sunday. Rain or shine, you will see us out there braving the elements. We do it because we love it. We are not made to sit in a car and rot away in traffic. We don’t mind the rain, we don’t mind the cold.

What we do mind, however, are the horrible roads. I do realise that this is something everyone talks and complains about. But I really feel that the Maltese are becoming way too complacent, and just shrug it off and accept it as being part of Malta. I don’t agree with this. In fact, this makes my blood boil.

Earlier this year, we had some incredibly bad storms that tore our roads to shreds. And the government said that they were going to do their best to solve this problem in the best way possible, which translates to “we will patch the roads in the cheapest way possible, just to seem like we care”. Less than a month after the “one-week war” on the roads, these cheap patches started floating or flaking off with the weather conditions that followed. And today, after sudden heavy rainfall, we’re back to square one.

When is this going to change? How many times will I have to risk my life to get to work? I understand that most of you will not know what it means to ride a motorbike in bad weather, but I’m sure a number of you have replaced a rim/tyre/shock absorber because a hole just happened to appear in front of you on a badly lit road. Now can you imagine a motorbike, going round a corner, at an angle (because that’s how bikes steer), and all of a sudden we have to make a split second decision about how to avoid the gaping chasm in the road without crossing lanes, making

sudden swerves, riding onto the gravel patch (there is always a gravel patch), and actually stay upright on the bike. Things tend to get a lot worse when it’s raining, because then the holes/gravel patches are covered by anything between one and four inches of water. This means that we actually ride straight into those gaping chasms of watery death.

Conditions aren’t made any easier by the fact that all the white lines painted on the road, are done with full gloss paint, that has zero grip when dry, let alone when wet with rain. So a stop sign before a zebra crossing is a potentially lethal part of the road, when doing 30 km/h. I just want to remind you that there is no more than 1.5 square inches of front tyre on the road at any point in time.

I am writing this letter to voice my concerns, and to ask a question on behalf of all motorcyclists. When are we going to have those decent roads you promised us? When will the contractors stop pocketing the money that was meant to go towards better roads? When will proper gravel be used to keep the roads’ grip up to standard? When will I be able to ride a bike without spending 75 per cent of the time looking out for and avoiding potential death pits? And most importantly, who is pocketing my road tax?

Graham Fenech

Naxxar