Some pictures are worth a thousands words. This one might save you a thousand bucks.

Technically speaking we’re talking about a graphic, not a picture per sé. It is a black silhouette (on an orange field) of a car is tipped into a crevice of broken pavement in such a way that the words “look out!” come to mind. It’s a pothole warning symbol, of the type that would be positioned on a road or highway to warn of rough pavement ahead. Its purpose is not too different from the universal language, no-words symbols used to warn us of curving roads, deer and falling rocks. Given how American motorists spend more than $400 per year, on average, to repair their vehicles from pothole damage, it can be a welcome warning in a world of deteriorating pavement.

When champion triathlete Linda Neary was on the road to victory at the 2003 Publix Family Fitness Weekend Coca-Cola Classic Triathlon Series in Nassau, Bahamas, she stopped during the run to check up on her closest competitor, Lotte Branigan of Vero Beach. Why? Branigan had fallen from tripping in a pothole on the course.

“I fell like that in Hawaii,” remarked Neary, who beat second-place finisher Branigan by a bare 14 seconds.

The fact is that triathletes know potholes. Two of the three legs in this competition – biking and running – often are staged on broken pavement, due to the fact that most venues are public streets and roads that are transformed into race courses just once a year.

On July 16 and 17 (2011), much of the country was riveted on “Carmageddon,” an orchestrated shutdown of ten miles of I-405 (the San Diego Freeway) between I-10 (Santa Monica Freeway) and US-101 (Ventura Freeway). Caltrans, the California state highways department in charge of the highway and repairs, conducted this major project over the two-day weekend to ultimately improve traffic flow with HOV (high occupancy vehicles) lanes, improve bridges, realign off ramps, widen underpasses and add retaining and sound walls. The marathon road-repair weekend was deemed a success – in traffic management and infrastructure improvement – and actually concluded several hours ahead of schedule.

But Carmageddon comes on the heels of two separate, massive and successful pothole projects conducted earlier in the year on City of Los Angeles-managed streets. “Operation Pothole,” (OP) conducted on weekends in January 2011 and again in June 2011, cumulatively filled 39,811 potholes. While not garnering nearly as much national attention, OP has made driving more safe and comfortable and less costly for motorists and businesses alike in LA.

Temperature extremes have a way of driving innovation. The Inuit, centuries before there were Ray Bans, would strap bone, tusks or bark to their faces, with a thin slit cut to allow their eyes to peer out. This would protect them from snow blindness, a real malady when a landscape of clean white snow and blinding sunshine would coincide. Perhaps it was something far ahead of its time: They looked like something that might easily be worn today by pop singer Lady Gaga.

Researchers in Minnesota, another snow-swept land (albeit a bit further south), are being equally inventive about how to fix potholes in the future. They are testing microwave technology to heat potholes in midwinter as a method to fix pavement before springtime – when those potholes will be larger, more dangerous and more expensive. Taking it a step further, the researchers are looking at using locally mined and recycled materials as a means of making the technology work even better.

Reports in July 2011 that a community college student has filed a $375,000 lawsuit against her school in Eugene, Oregon should not surprise too many people. The student tripped in a 6-inch-by-1-inch pothole next to where she parked, leading to $14,000 in medical costs. Perhaps what was most newsworthy about the case is the student has a disabling bone disease – and the pothole was adjacent to her handicapped parking space.

Across the United States, trip-and-fall accidents are a large part of what constitutes premises liability, an area of personal injury law that keeps lawyers busy and insurance companies nervous. Both public and private property are subject to lawsuits that claim the property owner failed to uphold a “standard of care” in maintaining walkways, driveways and parking lots in their charge. The Oregon case illustrates that one small pothole can add up to a very large legal defense bill and potentially devastating damage settlements.