carnage on the roads recently

[Drochit Blue]

what's going on?

4 more dead on the A9 this afternoon, one other killed in a crash between Culbokie-Conon Bridge as well.

Tragic waste imo. May they RIP

[Guest birdog]

what's going on?

I don't know specifics of the accident today but what is going on is that it's silly season, school holidays, tourists on the roads more used to driving on the wrong side of the road, people deciding that getting to their holiday quickly is more important than taking an hour rest and the amount of fecking tractors on the roads in the summer not to forget, of course, that the A9 is nowhere near the standard it should be for the level of traffic it now handles.

May the victims RIP and may we all be a little more careful on our roads.

[Alex MacLeod]

Its not the road that kills. Its the people on it. I travel the A9 very frequently and it never fails to amaze me the number of idiotic drivers that are out there. People with little patience that take stupid chances. Just yesterday, on the long dual section south of Dalwhinnie, I came upon a vehicle stopped on the carraigeway whilst a person took photo's. Obviously thought his hazard lights would protect his passengers if a 40 tonner came thundering towards him.

[Glen Mhor]

As a fairly regular user of the A9 I have to say that some of the driving (particularly overtaking) I've witnessed is just pure lunacy. It is obvious that very few drivers treat the A9 with the respect it deserves as it's a very dangerous road which can easily catch out the most experienced driver. It is a road where concentration is absolutely vital due to the changes between single and dual carriageway on various stretches.

I was shocked to hear of the four fatalities at The Slochd today in what sounds like an horrific crash and of another death on the Conon-Culbokie road.

PLEASE DRIVE WITH GREAT CARE ON THE A9.

[SMEE]

I disagree Glen....i think the problem is that the A9 is a good road and people abuse it. You wacth your rear view mirrors then next time yer on and al garentee you will see a number of chancers doing dodgy overtaking moves. You can be the best driver in the world and just be unfortunate enuff to meet one of these idiots coming the other way. Its a frightening thought :007:

[+Gringo]

what's going on?

4 more dead on the A9 this afternoon, one other killed in a crash between Culbokie-Conon Bridge as well.

Tragic waste imo. May they RIP

Inpatience, not understand what 60 means, not understanding what 'keep left' means, Sat Nav adjustments on the move, CD / MP3 player adjustments on the move, load music that causes havoc with concentration, the wretched mobile phone - even hands free, kids playing up in the back, kids playing up in the front, family pets running around!, total disrespect for other road users, sight seeing......the list could be endless. Todays motorist, in general, has only one aim and that is to get from A to B as fast as anyone else. For God's sake drive properly, follow the rules of the road, don't be impatient, don't take risks....but that'll never happen.

[CaleyD]

Your never going to stop the idiot drivers, and they only get caught during or after the crime....by which point it can be too late for some poor innocent sod.

I heard one suggestion that increasing the speed limit for the road to 70 would mean people wouldn't have so much need for overtaking....but you'd still get those who think it's safe to overtake in stupid places, and the solution doesn't account for the slower moving traffic which causes the queues anyway.

The only real solution is to duel the road from Perth to Inverness.....yes, you still get people driving too fast, but at least they would have the space to pass without the risk of meeting someone just as impatient coming the other way.

As for these crawler lanes.....worst idea ever IMO.  Since they were installed I've seen more close misses on them than on most of the rest of the road because drivers simply don't know or totally ignore the fact that they are for use by traffic coming from one direction only.

[+Gringo]

The news stated it happened on a section of single carriageway near Slochd....I thought Slochd was all duel? Anyway, sad to here of these deaths especially when one was a two year old child.

A9 crash

[Scarlet Pimple]

Shocking! And sobering.

In Canada we have what they call HOV (High Occupancy vehicles) lanes. 1. here a vehicle is carrying more than one passenger. Some bright sparks, fed up with the rush-hour traffic in the morning, put blow-up dolls in the passenger seat and arrange them in such a way that, at a glance , they appear to be asleep. Of course they get nabbed and suffer a big fine.Currently there are no recoords of what happens to the BUD's but one report suggested that the cops were quietly taking them home.... :014:

They occur on the Freeway and are the extreme left lane of three . All freeways are of course uni-directional --thus 6 lanes of traffic  side by side , three going one way and three going in (the opposite direction separated usually be a concrete median. The HOV lanes have not been a success, IMHO, because they are populated by little old and slow ladies and gentlemen, myopic nervous drivers, people who are slow and wear hats, people who are slow and can hardly see over the steering wheel  (drivers of an ethnic persuasion are usually small ).

The local authorities do not believe in following either common sense or the European model--i.e inside lane for slow drivers, middle lane for moderate  to faster drivers and the outer lane for faster drivers still so that often drivers who cannot get out of the HOV lane or the middle lane to pass get upset and very frustrated which means they become a risk to others. Generally, however, the Trans Canada Highway which stretches some 3,000 miles from the West Pacific coast to the Eastern coast, is a great road to drive on if you set the cruise control but stretches , like the prairies of Saskatchewan  for example, must be soul destroying with the monotony of the flat terrain.

Even dual carriageways here are much safer being separated from oncoming traffic by the median.

Hope that the A9 gets immediate attention as a result of this terrible tragic accident.

[Yngwie]

A while back I saw in one of the papers Scotland's road improvement projects ranked in order of priority, and duelling the A9 was some way down it. Add to that the phenomenal cost, and I can't see it happening for decades. And even then, it would probably be a toll road to recoup the investment.

[Alex MacLeod]

According to BBC an eye witness says the pick-up truck, involved in this latest tragedy, drifted over the road into the path of the oncoming car. Tiredness or illness perhaps? Some accidents occur that can never be foreseen and no amount of road safety measures will prevent them. One of the things that could be of help to stretch legs and relieve boredom is service stations. Ballinluig to Inverness is probably the longest stretch of road in the UK without a services stop unless you detour into the villages so drivers tend to just keep going, even if they know they should take a break.

[tm4tj]

The road itself is not the problem.  It is relatively straight (Perth-Inverness section) with vision at any point being 400m and wide enough for four artics to sit side by side.  Yet week in week out we still hear of fatalities or serious injuries on this road.  Part time drivers hiring vehicles, foreigners, caravaners, people in a hurry yes the list is endless, but how the **** do people manage to crash on this road.  To be honest, I believe carelessness is the biggest issue and it is costing lives.

Take care and pay attention please.

[SMEE]

Any statisticians out there happen to know the Morality rate per year for the A9 and the A96. I find it ironic that the A9 claims so many lives when the A96 doesnt seem as bad. Yet, I the A96 is a horrendous road and NO other two cities in UK would have to be connected by such a bad road. Maybe its because its a bad road it discourages risk taking and commands your full attention whereas, the A9 encourages speed.

[RiG]

The A96, bar a short piece of road between Keith and Fochabers which is very twisty, is fine. Perhaps not as flat as the A9 nor can you see as far but provided you drive in accordance with the conditions then the road is fine. As you say, you need your full attention when driving the A96 in places but for the most part it's fine. Some good stretches of road on there now have helped things out no end.

[Alex MacLeod]

Its very difficult to find figures for such things but between 2002 and 2006 the worst were:

A9...............69 deaths

A90.............63    "

A82.............46    "

A77.............41    "

The total deaths on Scotland's roads for 2007 was 282

Total deaths on Grampian Region roads which takes in a big part of the A96 for 2007 was around 30 which was half the figure for 2006.

[CaleyD]

A while back I saw in one of the papers Scotland's road improvement projects ranked in order of priority, and duelling the A9 was some way down it. Add to that the phenomenal cost, and I can't see it happening for decades. And even then, it would probably be a toll road to recoup the investment.

Spot on, and the craziest thing is that most of the projects that rank above the A9 are ones where they are trying to improve efficiency...what hope do we have when those making the decisions are prioritising speed over safety!!!

[tm4tj]

Gringo, the accident did happen on a single carriageway section of the A9, approx 200 yards North of the Geman soldiers head in the rock face.  This is maybe five or six hundred yards south of the Slochd summit.  The road has traffic lights set up now due to the fire which engulfed the vehicles and has left the surface badly burnt.

Sends a shiver up your spine when driving past it.

[MissICT]

Gringo, the accident did happen on a single carriageway section of the A9, approx 200 yards North of the Geman soldiers head in the rock face.  This is maybe five or six hundred yards south of the Slochd summit.  The road has traffic lights set up now due to the fire which engulfed the vehicles and has left the surface badly burnt.

Sends a shiver up your spine when driving past it.

Just drove past it about half an hour ago!

the road looks bad!

[SMEE]

Its an earie and humbling thought driving past the scene of a fatal crash. Never fails to get to me. The poor sods  :007:

[Glen Mhor]

Aye, and if you pass the site of a fatal crash later on you always remember what happened and how many were killed. It's strange what the memory holds and recalls, even years and decades after the event.

[Drochit Blue]

here's a questiopn for you who have grown up here (I was transported to Manchester aged 2 regrettably)....how do you learn to drive on motorways?? It's deffo a skill, but there's none within 200 miles.

[SMEE]

Heres how u learn, u drive thro Glasgow for the first time, only to suddenly realise there are 2 lanes of traffic either side of ya going the same direction :017:

[VIVA LAS TOKLEY]

A while back I saw in one of the papers Scotland's road improvement projects ranked in order of priority, and duelling the A9 was some way down it. Add to that the phenomenal cost, and I can't see it happening for decades. And even then, it would probably be a toll road to recoup the investment.

Spot on, and the craziest thing is that most of the projects that rank above the A9 are ones where they are trying to improve efficiency...what hope do we have when those making the decisions are prioritising speed over safety!!!

Unfortunatley the government view life as cheap compared to the cost of Dualling this road.  Short sighted view they have,  If they had done 5 miles a year since it was upgraded the whole road would have been done by now.

Never ceases to amaze me when down south the number of dual carriageways that you go on that hardly seem to have any traffic on them.

[alimci]

here's a questiopn for you who have grown up here (I was transported to Manchester aged 2 regrettably)....how do you learn to drive on motorways?? It's deffo a skill, but there's none within 200 miles.

Pull back into the lane you came from once you've finished overtaking.

If you're in the middle and not overtaking pull back into the left.

Use all your mirrors.

No different from any other road. Just faster and with more cars.

[Yngwie]

I think its Jeremy Clarkson who points out that it's not speed that kills. It's coming to a halt in an instant that does the damage. True, but not very helpful.