Safety campaign backed by Caithness man whose son died in 2012 crash
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The campaign for a safer A836 in north-west Caithness has been backed by a retired Dounreay employee whose son died in a car accident 10 years ago this week.
Derrick Milnes believes a combination of water on the road surface and blocked drains caused the crash in which 26-year-old Stewart lost his life at Scrabster brae on January 6, 2012.
Mr Milnes says he supports the aims of the recently formed Forss Campaign Group. It is focusing its attention on the area around the Forss straight, farther west than the scene of Stewart's accident, and wants to see measures such as a reduced speed limit and double white lines as well as improved culverts, drainage and road surfacing.
At the same time, the Rural Road Safety Campaign promoted by the John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier is seeking to highlight road problems across the far north and look at possible solutions.
Mr Milnes (84), a retired Dounreay communications officer and former chairman of Thurso and Wick Trades Union Council, also says Dounreay traffic can be "a menace". He revealed that he and his wife Dawn adjust the timings of their journeys between Thurso and their home at Reay to avoid the peak periods.
Stewart, a community mental health nurse, was on his way from Reay to Thurso to pick up his girlfriend when his car left the A836 and hit a section of drystone dyke.
"It is our view, and the view of the accident recovery vehicle driver, that the accident was caused by the amount of water on the road and the blocked drains," Mr Milnes said. “The recovery driver said to us the road was swimming.
“Within three months of Stewart's accident, the council dug out all the drains on that road right the way down to the bottom.
"Every time there's a big storm, or even a lot of rain, the water just flows down the road."
Mr Milnes says there have been long-running concerns over safety on the Thurso/Dounreay route.
“We always adjust what time we're either going in or coming out of the town because the Dounreay traffic is a menace," he said.
"It isn't our only road going into Thurso – we've got the back road [via Shebster]. That is always busy, but with the Dounreay road we will look at the timing on that and never go when Dounreay traffic is in full swing.
“On occasions, if we've been going south, we've gone the Strath Halladale road to get out of the way of it."
Mr Milnes says another worry on the A836 is the number of vehicle movements associated with the Limekiln wind farm development at Reay.
“It's not just the Dounreay traffic," he said. "The other problem is the Limekiln wind farm lorries.
“They're every 15 minutes. I don't know how many thousands of trees they've taken out but it is chaos.”
As reported recently, Forss Campaign Group has described the number of traffic accidents around the Forss straight as "disproportionately high". The group obtained police figures showing that over the past decade there have been 17 collisions in that area, with four of those having been fatal.
Campaigner Iain Gregory said: "It must also be remembered that a fairly high proportion of accidents are not reported to the police, and the figures given refer only to 'reported injury accidents', so the true numbers may well be far higher."
Highland Council said its local roads team dealt with two flooding problems on the A836 at Forss during 2021.
"One was water discharging onto the road surface from a utility apparatus roadside chamber and the other was a blocked roadside drain," a spokesperson for the local authority said. "Both have been cleared and are being monitored by our roads inspector.
"The A836 between Thurso and Dounreay has also had the offlets cleaned on Scrabster brae to allow surface water to get off the road faster and the team recently repaired a section of roadside ditch at Balmore following an LGV leaving the road.
"As part of the council’s annual routine maintenance programme our team will be cleaning more offlets, ditches and drains along the A836 later in this financial year."
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