Death wish overtaking on the A9

OK,l stand corrected irc. I was under the impression that the 375b was over and above the Barnett,strangely announced just before a nasty Indy campaign.

sorry for delay in answering,
all citylink coaches have a speed limiter set at 100kph, just over 62mph.
however, the nsl for a bus on a single carraigeway road is 50mph, so if one of our coaches is up your bumper where it shouldnt be try and get the reg number and report it to citylink, there is a phone number on the website.
all the vehicles are fitted with gps based speed/distance/location recorders which identify the driver also.

irc – Member

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

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/scotland-given-500m-sop-for-crossrail-6616253.html
..and for anyone who missed it //www.standard.co.uk/is the London Standard. No self interest re Crossrail there then is there?

however, the nsl for a bus on a single carraigeway road is 50mph

I don’t think they use the NSL in Scotland. All speed limits are explicitly stated (i.e 60, or 70). From my limited experience of driving there anyway.

We have the NSL here too.

Yes, and more people live and work in London than in all of Scotland.
Maybe there should be a 50 mph average speed camera enforced limit on this ‘most dangerous Scotch road’?

Or maybe it should be dualed? Or perhaps improving the commute for Londoners is more important that the not insignificant number of people ( not just from “scotchland”) who die/are injured on it each year.

Well maybe they should learn to drive safely instead of putting themselves and other people at risk? And that the operators of the road should put measures into place so that dangerous driving is detected and appropriate punishment made?
How many passenger miles/ year on this road? What would be reasonably practicable?

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.

There’s quite a lot of spots to overtake safely if you’ve got enough power considering how slowly some of the tourists/coffin dodgers drive along there. It doesn’t help that the only places I’ve seen a mobile speed camera on there is on the 3 lane bypass by Settle or one of the long straights near Clapham which are the safest places to overtake.

part of the issue on the a9 is also varying speed limits for different vehicles …

as for APs post – you strike me as someone who lives in a me centric bubble based on your last couple of posts

all “improving” londoners commute does is increase the distance from which people consider it ok to commute to london from – repeat moaning adnausem
t.

this is a main artery of scotland – this get supplies to the highlands and islands of scotland – its not just a road to bumble **** that people drive for fun.

as for APs post – you strike me as someone who lives in a me centric bubble based on your last couple of posts

Not the first time he has had a whinge about money being spent on Scottish infrastructure

”Yet more subsidies for Scotland” – chippy southerner 🙂 😉

Perth to Blair Atholl it’s barely worth overtaking anything unless it’s really quiet; I’ll happily drive at speed limit and know it well enough to know where it _is_ safe to overtake and where it just looks like it might be. Speeds are high and sight lines often more limited than you might think. Wasn’t always the way but now I stick to speed limit, try to avoid ending up lead car in a queue, leave plenty space and if people want to pass let them get on with it. Having a quicker car makes it more relaxing as you can pop past things if required so don’t “need” to take chances.

Perth to Inverness is 112 miles so at 60 that’s 2 hours, at 40 three hours. Hopefully the average speed cameras will help but only if lorries are allowed to do 50 as well. Sooner it’s upgraded to dual the better really.

A65 always scared me too, used to live in Leeds and head up into the Dales or Lakes for riding, bad mix of people in a rush, pensioners and motorbikes.

sorry for delay in answering,
all citylink coaches have a speed limiter set at 100kph, just over 62mph.
however, the nsl for a bus on a single carraigeway road is 50mph, so if one of our coaches is up your bumper where it shouldnt be try and get the reg number and report it to citylink, there is a phone number on the website.
all the vehicles are fitted with gps based speed/distance/location recorders which identify the driver also.

Hmm well it was certainly doing waaay over 62mph, it might have been the megabus though with hindsight. Interesting on the gps, I could probably figure out the date/time actually as I was heading up for the snowman rally.

ALL old A roads are bad, they were built at a time when there was much less traffic and it went a lot slower; on older turnpikes like the A5 in Wales it wasn’t even motorised. Over the decades the A roads must have had a disproportionate amount of cash thrown at them for safety improvements compared with motorways. As with the RNs in France, people need to learn that you can’t hurry on an A road like on a motorway.

Oh, I’m not winging about spending money on Scottish infrastructure – I think you guys spend too much time moaning already, it’s just that your buttons are so easy to press 😉
You still haven’t answered my question though.
How many passenger miles per year on that road? And if its such a dangerous road why not rigidly enforce speed limits and driving standards?

And if its such a dangerous road why not rigidly enforce speed limits and driving standards?

It doesn’t tend to be speeding that causes the issues ime, it’s frustration caused by being held up by slow moving vehicles and not enough sections of dual carriage ways.

And if its such a dangerous road why not rigidly enforce speed limits and driving standards?

You’d do well on that other thread 😆

How many passenger miles per year on that road?

Why does that matter?

it’s an arterial route, many people have no option but to use that road.

Just because people choose not to live in a city where they’re never more than 1.5″ away from the nearest person, doesn’t mean that their right to adequate, safe transport should be prejudiced.

The A9 is poorly designed. If it was a transport route in London, people would be falling over themselves to whinge about it. Worth a try might even get a £15bn new railway 🙂

Just because passenger mileage is lower, doesn’t make the user of that road lower priority IMO. If we calculated all spending on that basis, nothing would ever get down outside of cities.

Between 2006 and 2010, it claimed more lives than any other road in Scotland with a death toll of 67, while there were 58 fatalities between 2008 and 2012, an average of slightly more than 14 a year.

Linky

“There have also been over a 1,000 accidents on the A9 in the last five years, meaning that we are witnessing more than 200 accidents a year on average and an accident every second day.

Linky

traffic has or seems to have got noticeably busier in the last 10 / 15 years definitely. One problem – alongside many – is the Noah’s Ark mix of traffic, other is that the sight lines are tempting to wing for a speculative overtake – and then you’re into bullying / aggressive overtakes – some mis-judged, others just plain out of order..

[edit] – and I see where you’re at for the old ‘passenger miles’ routine, but –
a/ there’s a lot of haulage use that route, is that simply 0 passengers?
b/ often, especially around the Pitlochry – Kingussie stretch, if there’s an incident that closes the road — it’s an absolute nightmare for diversions, any diversion is 2/3 hours extra easily, and in winter – more, or indeed the diversion closed as well (as I’ve found in the past, ended up going from Edinburgh to Elgin via Aberdeen, which was nice and took about 7 hours..

Bearing in mind how many people from London have retired to Inverness, can it not come out of Boris’s budget?

“There have also been over a 1,000 accidents on the A9 in the last five years, meaning that we are witnessing more than 200 accidents a year on average and an accident every second day.

i.e. it’s not actually that dangerous, given its length. According to this report, the A9 is a low/medium-risk road.

That graphic shows those roads which have a high number of serious/fatal accidents against the number of total users.

The issue with the A9 (and A82) is that they are the only viable options for north/south travel in Scotland. People don’t have a whole lot of choice but to use them. Add in the fact that the A9 in particular is poorly designed and you’ve got a crap situation for people who need to use it, whether daily or every now and then.

In reality, it’s just a few sections of the A9 which are the worst for accidents, so that probably accounts for the low risk rating on that graphic. But for many people using the road, they’re using a significant length of it, including the blackspots.

It would be interesting to see a break-down of A9 accidents by carriageway type. However, as I’ve already pointed out, a significant number of the accidents are taking place north of Inverness, an area not being significantly upgraded (Berriedale Braes being a notable exception – and not for safety).

Lots of people mentioning what the ave speed cameras might do. I haven’t noticed anyone post it before but here’s the site with as much info on it as they seem to have published about the basis for the decision.
A9info[/url]

I use the A9 lots for work and am not looking forward to it as I suspect there will be lots more convoys with frustration overtaking going on a-plenty.

That would only be the case if a significant number of drivers currently break the law.

77% of all KSI accidents occurred on single carriageways

That’s from your link the A9 oldbloke. Some sobering stuff in there.

No it wouldn’t Druidh. The convoys form behind vehicles doing less than the speed limit. Most of the vehicles overtaking are doing so within the speed limit, at least for the early part of the overtake. There are so many HGVs doing 40 now on the A9 that most overtakes are in the 40-60 mph range.

I rest my case.
Really? Most I see are travelling at 50mph (and that A9 report you linked to backs me up).

I should say that the Tesco lorries are a notable exception.

Some sobering stuff in there.

There certainly is, but there’s also plenty of stuff which is just data listed rather than explained. If my recolection is right, there’s a bit about the very high percentages of accidents involving HGVs, but nothing saying if that’s HGVs crashing or being crashed into. Surely knowing the answer to that might aid safety actions?

On the way to visit In Laws with my wife and young son in the car.
We’d just driven through Arrochar and were on the A83, where it climbs parallel to Loch Long.
We were just reaching the top of the wee climb, approaching in the other direction was a BT van, when a tit in a wee sports car came flying out from behind the van.
I couldn’t swerve, with a 20 or 30 foot drop to Loch Long feet to my left, so just had to slam the brakes on and hope we didn’t hit. He flashed past within centimetres of my wing mirror.

A second or 2 later and theres no way he’d have missed, and that, I’m pretty sure, would have been it for us. A family of 3 dead because some tit in a fast car thought he was so special that he could overtake on a blind bend.

I think you’ll find he was just “pushing on” 🙄

making progress 😉

aP – Member
making progress

No, he was being a tit.

Stop tarring reasonable drivers who use these expressions with that brush.

Heading for Skye one day on the motorbike I found myself in a situation that even today I cant believe I survived.
Diddling along past the five sisters (range of hills – not local ladies) cos it was a bit dampish, I came round a corner doing about 50, when **** me a Skye marble lorry was overtaking a naval fuel bowser right into my face.
Luckily it was a left hander and I was banked over a wee bit, but even then I had about 2 feet left to play with. The tosser didn’t even slow down or brake. In fact he had already gone through one bend and this was his second. What he was doing playing Russian roulette I’ll never know.
Now I turned the bike round and passed everyone inc the trucker (at least 10 cars behind both trucks), then came to a halt in order to get his number. Of course I promptly forgot it cos my knees turned to jelly. But if I ever meet the f****r on a dark night, I will make sure he never drives a lorry – ever, ever again!

@bigjim
citylink/megabus = same thing, same drivers, same vehicles, same gps.
95% are fitted with cctv too.
a bus could over run the speed limiter downhill, quite easily, they weigh 16.5 tons when empty.
seriously though, if one of our drivers is being a tit, report him/her, the company dont want dangerous drivers, and tbh i dont want tarred with the same brush.
vehicle reg, time date and approx location will do.

sangobegger theres a section of Snake Pass here in the Peaks which is begging for dual-solid white lines. Its unsighted/if you don’t know it you’ll think its safe to overtake but its lethal. You see many lines (into the soft grass and into wire fencing) where it looks like someone swerved to avoid.

c.f. Wacky Races – then have to explain what the Wacky races were…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-25929298

Ha! Timely article!

The average speed cameras won’t stop a lot of the slower overtaking of tesco lorries but should stop the crazy 90mph sprint overtaking that happens on the dual carriageway sections, where everyone feels they absolutely have to get in front of everyone else.

I reckon 90% of objectors to the average speed cameras are really objecting because they want to break the speed limit themselves.

They won’t stop the crazy 90mph over takes though. If you’re stuck behind a lorry/slow traffic for any length of time then slow back down to the speed limit after you’re past, the overtake was just as dangerous and your average won’t be illegal.