Death wish overtaking on the A9

citylink driver here

you’re brave admitting that on here 😉

Van driver here, up the A9 regularly, it is rare that I don’t have a Citylink coach either up my erse and flashing me or trying to overtake me regardless of the fact that I’m driving at the speed limit.

The Scottish Government have an aspiration to dual Perth-Inverness by 2025…I’ve been working in the tender for the first lot for the last month! Glengarry to Kincraig, with other contracts to be awarded this year.

With regard to the original post : i see this all the time (almost daily basis) on the A75 as some folk obviously do not know the road in question and overtake in the worst possible places, i guess it is due to folk trying to make the ferries at Cairnryan or otherwise, i’ve taken to not yielding my position on the road as a number of times in the past few months i have had to slam on the brakes and take to the verge to allow someone to either take my position on the road or to avoid a car coming towards me whilst flashing it’s lights as it overtakes in the oncoming lane. I always drive with an HD camera recording out of my windscreen and a gps data system so from now on i’m sticking to my lane at my chosen speed, i say **** them – they can drive off the road from now on.

Horrible road, seen some crazy overtaking and terrible aftermaths of crashes, worst was a head on, citreon sitting there with the engine block where the people in the front seats would have been, completely flattened from there forward. A friend was the first on scene at another head on and it has affected him really badly.

Always end up arriving at Inverness/Perth a few cars behind the idiot overtakers too. Definitely needs speed cameras all along it and I think white crosses to mark the fatality locations, like they do in Australia, that is pretty sobering, especially when there is a little cross representing a child.

Someone told me that the A9 was built to be a dual carriageway – makes sense when you look at the layout i.e. lots of gentle curves

I don’t think that is true really, where would there not be a gentle curve on it, it doesn’t follow tight turn terrain, it’s a trunk road. it is a lot straighter than it used to be though before it was upgraded.

citylink driver here, up the A9 regularly, it is rare that i dont have to do an emergency brake due to some fanny overtaking where it is not appropriate.
cant understand it.

What are citylink coaches limited to, if anything? One of the maddest overtakes I’ve seen on the A9 was a citylink coach, I’d guess it was doing close to 90. Tried to get my passenger to film it but they were asleep and didn’t catch it in time.

And apparently average speed cameras are the answer….
Bloody idiot drivers will still be idiots.

Do you even logic?

I used to go up the A9 20 or so years ago in the winter and there was no speed cameras and relatively little traffic. You could easily cruise at 70-80 mph.

Now there is more traffic, speed cameras, some sections have been altered. Its a much more frustrating road to drive and the average speed has dropped considerably.

You can see why people now get frustrated, but still no excuse for being an idiot.

I’m far more patient on the A82 these days. Quite a hefty police presence between Bridge of Orchy and Altnafeadh for the last while. Was surprised to see your lot out last weekend, a fairly quiet and miserable Saturday morning in January, they had the gun out on the straight leading up to altnafeadh.

There’s a Trunk Roads Policing Group based in Lochaber now, so there should be more on the main road.

Do you really believe that will make a difference? There are now so few Police actually out patrolling and bringing the random element to enforcement that the public can speed and break motoring laws with impunity. Those who get caught by a speed camera deserve the fine for their own incompetence but a careful and observant driver stands a good chance of getting away with almost anything, though woe betide them if they do cause an accident because the Police will analyse it forensically.

Who knows? Everyone gripes that there aren’t enough actual police patrolling the roads, then when they put 5 new ones (to be increased to 10) in an area purely to deal with roads policing, you’re still whinging.

There has always been a random element to getting caught, and unless you have the entire road network being observed by police officers at all times, there always will be.

EDIT Unless I misread you, and you’re saying there’s now so few that there’s not even a random element anymore?

I had this over the tops with a woman who lived in Holmfirth. I know this as I followed her home then reported her.

Overtaking cars madly into blind twisting dips – she side-scythed me almost putting me into a ditch at c60. Did the same again ahead just avoiding another head on. I imagine shes dead now if she commutes on that road that way daily.

Sorry hijack. Somafunk – what hd camera you got ? Roadhawk ? How is it ?

It’s not peculiar to the A9. Some of the idiots you come across on the A65 west of Skipton are unbelievable. Desperate to get past even though there are only a handful of possible overtaking spots. The packs of moronic motorbikers in the summer don’t help either.

It was probably one of the driving gods on the speeding thread ‘making progress’.

Hey, it’s not their fault they’ve got a “heavy right foot”.

I’m interested in a camera too. New thread time, I think.

A9 didn’t even make the long list for Cameron’s central government funded vital road upgrades. As a bagger l use it a fair bit and it is terrifying,and l used to commute around London,brum,manchester.

Martinhutch but the A65 is crackers the avg speed is about 35mph because there are so many incompetent people on it who live in cities and have never driven round a bend. There are very few bends on that road that you even need to break for. There is plenty of over taking opportunities too even round bends if you just look ahead rather than 3 metres in front.

So idiots do 35mph, people get annoyed and end up making stupid over taking passes.

On a quiet morning that road is great fun and you never really need to dip below 60.

A9 is awful for folk driving at 40, then as soon as they get to the dual section, up to 80 they go. Idiots.

the A65 is crackers the avg speed is about 35mph because there are so many incompetent people on it who live in cities and have never driven round a bend.

I think the city thing is probably inaccurate and unfair, but I used to drive across it a fair bit and there did seem to be more very carefully driven Rovers and Hondas than you’d expect.

I wonder how much rebuilding the A9 to a decent standard will cost, and how much tax revenue the distilleries along it contribute each year.

£3Bn for Perth to Inverness, though the accident rate for Inverness north seems (to me) to be higher.

The distilleries are trying to reduce road use

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/food-drink/features/speyside-distilleries-launch-whisky-trains-trial-1-3092391

A9. shudder. Been on that road hundreds of times – in the thousands possibly – since early 80s – even in the days of dual carriageway. Really don’t like it sometimes, every other week / month there’s a big incident, sadly the combined speeds usually means it’s not going to end well.

I have happened upon at least two nastys in the last 10/15 years, probably both happened only 5 to 10 minutes ahead of me if that. One was – not a co-incidence — in the stretch mcmoonter mentions – a bad one, cars everywhere, up on the banking – I walked up to see what was up from tailback, hurriedly walked back, felt quite ill 🙁

Turned round and headed back – mean time alerting a mate who was maybe 20 minutes behind in sam tailback – to Edinburgh via Spean Bridge, still better than waiting for hours. And that was then, the road gets closed for longer possibly.

Snow adds that extra frisson of course 🙁

A9 didn’t even make the long list for Cameron’s central government funded vital road upgrades.

Possibly because roads are the responsibility of the Scottish Govt. It’s up to the SNP where the transport budget gets spent.

Question for the legal folks on here:

Given the well documented accident rate and issues with the A9, if say a family member of mine was killed in a collision, how likely would I be able to bring a case against Police Scotland, the Highways Agency and/or Highlands Council for negligence or something similar?

Not at all likely. The road is a piece of tarmac. It’s drivers that cause accidents (unless it’s a mechanical malfunction). Blame would be apportioned to the driver of one (or more) of the vehicles involved. That’s not to say that better road design won’t reduce accident rates if it’s to help bad drivers drive better.

Also dislike the A9. It’s just a mad bit of road, reminds me of driving in Saudi Arabia.

The last near miss I saw was on a long uphill sweeping bend near Kingussie. Old ford fiesta 1.0l overtaking four cars and a artic. They went round the whole bend parallel with the artic with traffic coming the other way. Terrifying stuff, if a bus or truck had come they were dead.

I dont like to be a contrarian but I do more than 400 miles every week on the A9 and I have to say I dont find it that bad. In 6 years I can only think of one instance of potentially seriously dangerous overtaking, ironically by a blood transfusion lorry. A95 on the other hand 😯

@tomd why didnt they brake/pull back in?!!

Teenage boy worried as to how itd look?

irc – Member
A9 didn’t even make the long list for Cameron’s central government funded vital road upgrades.
Possibly because roads are the responsibility of the Scottish Govt. It’s up to the SNP where the transport budget gets spent.

POSTED 1 HOUR AGO

Nope,375 billion plan to improve NATIONAL transport infrastructure up to and beyond 2030 All funded by Westminster above and beyond any devolved spending. Still,at least the train from brum to London will be a bit faster as well,all for 100 to 166 times the cost of dualling the A9.

Today was no different. Mad Mondeo lady tried (aborted) double overtake – as we passed the 2 miles to dual carriageway signs in the snow south of Ballinluig.

hora – Member

@tomd why didnt they brake/pull back in?!!

Teenage boy worried as to how itd look?

Because they’d passed the row of cars and missed the chance to pull in before starting on the truck. I guess they just decided they were overtaking the lot, neglecting their car was sh1t and the straight quite short!

I fired someone from our Inverness office before Xmas as she lost her driving license on the a9 after nearly killing a couple coming south bound… It was her 5th time police had stopped her on the road in 6 months. Police called me as she was in a company car, sent me the footage from the camera car following her after she was prosecuted.

She had 100 excuses but none should be valid.

Duckman

Nope,375 billion plan to improve NATIONAL transport infrastructure up to and beyond 2030 All funded by Westminster above and beyond any devolved spending. Still,at least the train from brum to London will be a bit faster as well,all for 100 to 166 times the cost of dualling the A9.

Any link for that claim? I can’t see anything that says this £375 Billion is extra cash over and above existing budgets for Scotland or the UK. In parliamentary debate on the subject Danny Alexander said

The Welsh Government’s capital budget is allocated to them through the Barnett formula, so they have complete freedom to determine how they use the money.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2013-12-04b.917.0

So unless you know different I would suggest it will be the same for Scotland. Roads cash and decisions are devolved.

I think the way it should work is that Scotland and Wales would be allocated a sum based on the Barnett Formula within which their local governments would work. However, there have been a few large infrastructure projects that were not handled in this way. HS1 (£6Bn), Crossrail (£15Bn) and the London Olympics (£9Bn) are three that come to mind.

Not Crossrail. Scotland got 500 million under Barnett for Crossrail.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/scotland-given-500m-sop-for-crossrail-6616253.html

My apologies. £500 Million for £16Bn though? Hmmm……roughly 1/3rd of what it should have been on a per capita basis.

I did a few trips up and down the A9 last September and saw some eye opening driving. The whole dual/single thing doesn’t work (In NZ it’s the norm and causes exactly the same issues). The dawdlers speed up and the heros try and get past everything in one hit. There was some pretty epic singleminded, selfish driving as well. The volume of traffic was quite high to what I remember which probably doesn;t help.

At least they finally addressed that crap short bit of dual just before Pitlochry southbound. Everyone who didn’t know it went for the overtake and then had to slam on the brakes when the road ran out. 🙄

I’ve always assumed the A9 was supposed to by fully dualled, there are some fairly obvious bits where there is enough room for 4 lanes, but there are only 2, with wide/flat verge instead of Tarmac.

At least they finally addressed that crap short bit of dual just before Pitlochry southbound. Everyone who didn’t know it went for the overtake and then had to slam on the brakes when the road ran out.

Yeah i’ve always wondered if that was the shortest section of dual carriageway in the country?!

I’ll generally overtake slower traffic on A roads, but on the A9 it’s often pointless. There is more to plannng overtaking than just getting past the vehicle in front. If you are doing it just to join another queue doing 55 a hundred yards down the road then what’s the point?