Vim Rodrigo's tongue-in-cheek but advisory warning (Oxford Mail, February 28) about the white rings marking potholes should be heeded farther afield than Rose Hill in Oxford.

Motorists need only to travel through the bridge improvements on the A40 towards Witney to see them 'flourishing' in the middle of the new sections.

This poses four questions:

Who allows contractors to leave 6in (150mm) holes in a new job like the A40? Surely the job has to be signed off or accepted as finished by someone?

If the engineer can spray paint around a pothole -- thus identifying it to we mere mortals as 'a pothole' -- why can't a team of menders with some hot asphalt, a couple of shovels and a whacker not simply travel around in a couple of trucks filling them in as they find them? Or as they are reported?

If anyone is injured by a marked pothole, will the council highways officer or engineer be held responsible for allowing an injury to any person, by allowing a problem they knew existed (he marked it with spray remember) but failed to immediately repair or rectify, to be the cause of such an accident -- or worse?

Is this Oxfordshire County Council's bright idea of replacing 'off-road' driving on the Ridgeway, by allowing our local roads to be in such a bad state that the only way around our estates will be by 4x4?

Answers please.

I hope Mr Rodrigo's 'blooming' potholes warning makes a few at County Hall uncomfortable, at least as uncomfortable as those of us who bump into them every day! DAVID WILLIAMS, David Walter Close, Oxford