Lives being put at risk by 'people driving like idiots' on Forss stretch of A836
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A Forss resident has added his voice to concerns over road safety in the area and warned that lives are being put at risk by “people driving like idiots”.
John Crofts revealed how a flagstone garden wall at his property alongside the A836 had been struck regularly over the years by out-of-control vehicles.
He called for the road to be “reconditioned”, with new white lines and a lower speed limit.
Dr Crofts spoke out following the launch of the Forss Campaign Group, which is calling for safety improvements on the Forss straight.
The road is used by motorists travelling to and from Dounreay and Vulcan, as well as vehicles associated with wind farms and timber extraction. Forss is also part of the North Coast 500 tourist route.
Dr Crofts (73), a former director of safety at Dounreay, says he avoids using the road around the peak time for workers travelling home towards Thurso because he is worried about speeding and unsafe overtaking.
“As always, 99 per cent of people are fine. It's the one per cent that kill people," he said. "People have died along this road."
Dr Crofts and his wife Jean have lived at Windrift, on the high part of the road on the Thurso side of Forss, since 2005. In that time the flagstone wall in front of the house has been hit four times.
“As you come by us there's a sharp corner and there have been so many accidents there," he said. “I've said to myself many times, I wonder if anybody adds up how many there have been.
“They come along the straight and think they're driving safely – it's a long, straight road and you can do the speed limit or more than – and then of course you come round all the wiggly road, and they're still doing the same speed.
“If you drive down there you'll see that the camber is all over the place – the road goes up and down.
“There are virtually no white lines any more between the edge of Thurso and Forss. As you come to the very sharp corner it says 'Slow' on the road – well, it used to. There's just a few bits now.
“No disrespect to Dounreay – I used to work there. But when you get a long queue of traffic in the evening, particularly as you're coming up Forss hill, just occasionally somebody will overtake.
“My daughter has ended up off the road – not damaged and not hurt, but off the road by somebody doing that. And I've certainly had to put all the brakes on and all but stop to let people get back in.
“We look at the clock and we sort of say, 'Oh, it's four o'clock, I'll go down a little bit later.'”
Dr Crofts retired from the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 2007, then had a spell as a consultant and worked for several years at the Fukushima reactor site in Japan.
He said: “We need to stop people driving like idiots down there and we need the road reconditioned.
"It needs white lines, it needs a better speed limit. I just think that 60 down this bit of road is stupid.
“You go the other side [of Thurso] and you go through Murkle and you go through a long 50 mph limit because that's a dangerous bit of road as well.
“If you come down this bit of road, I would say it ought to be 50, but the other signage is ridiculous. There are no white lines, there's no edge-of-the-road marking – in the dark it's quite difficult to see.”
Dr Crofts also claims that tourists have been at fault.
“We're on the landward side of the road," he said. "Over the years there have been two or three cars that we know of that have gone off on the other side of the road, and usually they're tourists looking at the view.
“There's a lovely view from up here – you can see tourists driving by and staring out to sea.”
In addition, he has identified problems with drainage in wet conditions.
“The water sits on the road and flows across it," Dr Crofts said. "Every now and then they come and dig all the channels at the side of the road, and it lasts a little while, and then you wait until there's another accident and then they come and dig it all up again.”
In the meantime, he says he has given up replacing damaged parts of the flagstone wall.
“Years ago there was a very nice young man and he was very apologetic," Dr Crofts recalled. "He and a gang of his mates arrived a couple of days later with a lorry with flagstones on it and rebuilt the wall, which was wonderful. And then about six months later a van went through it.”
