LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A street full of potholes is giving drivers on Vegas Valley Drive a bumpy ride that one calls damaging, costly, and ignored.
87-year-old May Simpson said she runs errands three times a week, departing from her senior living community between Nellis and Lamb that she’s called home for over a decade and her drive isn’t smooth.
“We’ve been in a perpetual cycle of, ‘oh, here’s another hole. Yeah, now here comes another hole,’” Simpson said inside her home Thursday morning.
They’re consecutive potholes that she cannot avoid as some are located at the entrance and exit to her neighborhood. Temporary fixes, she said, do not last long.
“They’ve come with buckets of tar,” Simpson said. “The trucks come down, hit that tar, it’s gone.”
The divots, additionally, are causing damage. She added she was forced to replace the four shocks of her car for over $400 because of constantly going over these potholes. Neighbors 8 News Now spoke to off camera give similar stories.
Further, drivers like Simpson are concerned about the safety implications of what could happen.
“One day somebody’s going to hit one of those potholes, go to swerve, and I’m going to be behind them. Who’s at fault?” Simpson said.
This stretch of road, maintained by the county, is in Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom’s district. He and his office staff say they were unaware of the potholes and do not have any formal complaints about the concerns.
Simpson, for one, said she’s submitted complaints over the past seven years to the county about poor road conditions.
“I apologize if somehow earlier it got lost in the shuffle,” Segerblom said inside his office Thursday. “I drive that area and I hadn’t seen those, but potholes are unacceptable.
But now, after 8 News Now brought the concern to his attention, he said other county personnel are getting involved.
“After (8 News Now) had reached out to me, I called our public works department. They went out and looked at it,” Segerblom said. “They say that we can– maybe it’s so serious (that) we have to redo the road at some point, but we can try to level it out in the meantime.”
But, to drivers like Simpson, the corrections are needed now.
“We’ve got to do it now before it gets even worse,” Simpson said.
Besides the apology, Commissioner Segerblom directs people to the District E email (districte@clarkcountynv.gov) and the FixIt Clark County app to report road concerns.
“If you don’t get a response right away, reach out again, because the truth is, we get lots of complaints, but we’re really here to fix things,” Segerblom said.
Les Schwab’s website said hitting potholes can inflict a host of problems on a car. For drivers who cannot avoid hitting one, it urges them to take their foot off the gas, hold the steering wheel tightly, and not brake for most control during the impact.