Originally Posted by
wolfchild
Majority of road damage is weather related and the result of extreme winter temperatures and has nothing to do with cars. Winter weather causes some serious road damage, here in my area we end up with thousands of pot holes after each winter...Big trucks and busses may cause some damage. Cars are too small and too light to do any serious road damage.
Some weather-related damage is due purely to weather, such as frost heave or freeze-thaw. Other weather-related damage is due to heavy wheel loads on roads with wet or saturated subgrade conditions. You may notice alligator cracking during the summer but it is in the winter that the chunks pop out and create potholes. This is due to increase in flex due to weak wet support below. Engineers almost always recommend drainage for the aggregate under the pavement but it is almost never installed, at least in my part of the world.
And yes, the cars hardly matter at all other than for number of lanes which is also greatly influenced by the semi traffic.