NICKY MARR: I feel fear when I know close friends or family are driving on A9
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Last Thursday Radio Scotland dedicated their 9am phone-in to the Scottish Government’s broken promises over dualling the A9. They asked me, as a regular user of the road – both south from Inverness to Perth, and north to Thurso, to comment on the government’s inaction, and their failure to set out a new timetable.
I like to think of myself as fairly well in control of my emotions. Stephen Jardine, who was anchoring the show that day, is a talented and well-briefed presenter. We interact on the show on a regular basis.
But I struggled to keep the anger and disappointment out of my voice when talking about the 13 fatalities that occurred between Perth and Inverness last year alone, about the families and communities who have lost loved ones, and the real fear I feel when I know a close friend or family member is driving the road. Until I hear their key in the door or receive a text to say they have arrived safely, I can’t rest.
I also struggled to remain calm while countering the argument that it’s drivers who are dangerous, not roads. Of course there must be a grain of truth there – if every driver drove with perfect care and attention, in perfectly maintained vehicles, on perfectly maintained roads and in perfect weather, then we’d all arrive at our destinations every time.
But life happens. Distractions occur. Deer jump out. Mistakes and mechanical failures happen. Road surfaces deteriorate, and drivers become confused, especially when continuously switching from single carriageway to dual.
The bottom line is that on stretches of the road where there is just one carriageway in each direction, there is no margin for error, human or otherwise. The vast majority of accidents on the A9 happen on single carriageway sections. To save lives, dualling must happen.
And if I was angry when challenged by Stephen Jardine about driver error, I was even angrier when it was suggested that the delays in dualling were because of Covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine. None of these began to impact until 2020. With only 11 of the 88 promised miles dualled so far, the original deadline was never going to be met, regardless of this appalling trio.
Since 2011, the Scottish Government have invested in the Queensferry Crossing and in the Edinburgh trams. Neither of those projects were – I believe – a reaction to serious loss of life. I can’t help but feel that those of us north of Perth are being treated as second-class Scots. And no-one has even started talking about Caithness roads yet.
Any one of us who regularly drives the A9 could have been angry on air in my place. I drove between Inverness and Pitlochry last Sunday, past the burnt trees near Tomatin, a reminder of where 18-year-old Regan Johnstone, from Elgin, died in an accident last month.
I was grateful to Radio Scotland for highlighting the issue of the A9 dualling on their national platform, but that was once, for an hour, and they’ll now have ticked it off their list.
Which is why we need local champions of the cause, and of the communities who live along its length, all the way to from Perth to Scrabster Harbour.
The Inverness Courier’s A9 Crisis Summit, which will take place next month with politicians, safety campaigners, families’ representatives, and business leaders, will aim to affect short-term changes to improve the safety of the road, while holding the government to account over the dualling that must happen.
If the Inverness Courier Leadership Debate served to make the three contenders for Scotland’s First Minister more aware of all the issues the north faces, this Crisis Summit will drive home the importance of upgrading our main arterial route.
The Scottish Government will have no choice but to act. With a powerful local media leading the campaign, the communities along the length of Scotland’s deadliest road aren’t going to quietly forget being let down.
