Cleveland, OH — CLEVELAND -- Winter will leave us soon, but not without a reminder of our time together.
Potholes are the bane of many Clevelanders’ existence and all you have to do is drive down any street to see why.
There’s two sides to every story, though, and Case Western graduate David Yeu helped fund the other side of the pothole annoyance.
"We took just an old backpack, we filled it with this fluid and we threw it into a pothole and it worked. Just like every other Clevelander, we've had our share of flat tires and undercarriage failure, but here at Case Western Reserve we learned the properties of a special shock absorbent fluid."
Six years ago, Chimadika Okoye and his friends started experimenting with the fluid and eventually came up with the Thump Pad. It’s designed to absorb the shock of your tires hitting those annoying potholes.
“Our pad, it reduces shock so much that you're no longer going to flatten tires, break axles. You're really going to take the dangers out of the potholes."
Once you put the Thump Pad in the hole, you notice a significant difference in the jolt while going over a pothole.
Right now, they’re hoping to sell the idea to city street crews as a quick starting point to curing the pothole issues.
"We're not trying to replace cold patch or any other conventional methods, but this serves as a temporary stop gap,” Yeu said. "They're reusable for at least 4-6 months, the whole pothole season."
The Thump Pad is already in five states, and Yeu said they’re working with Cleveland to try and get the solution to a street near you.