'Brings me out in a cold sweat': The human impact of the A9 saga laid bare

The A9 between Perth and Inverness will now not be dualled until 2035 - ten years after the Scottish Government first promised to complete the mammoth project.

There is a human impact to these delays.

Since 2012, there have been 51 fatalities and 208 serious casualties on the A9. The worst year came in 2022 when there were 13 deaths in a single year.

This year there were three deaths in March along. On March 5, Roy Bannerman, 60, died in a crash near Aviemore. Seven days later James Noble, 30, from Nairn, died south of Tore.

Eight days after that, a 90-year-old man died after a collision near Newtonmore. And on March 24, a ten-year-old girl was left in a critical condition after a three-vehicle crash north of Dalwhinnie.

On April 30, a 59-year-old woman was killed just north of Tore and on May 6, Morven Gordon, 42, died after a collision at Slochd.

Ian Davidson, 70, from Dunkeld ended up in Ninewells Hospital’s major trauma unit in January after being involved in a crash on the notorious road.

He was turning onto the northbound single carriageway out of Dunkeld for his regular morning jaunt up to Ballinluig when he was hit by a car coming southbound.

Mr Davidson said: “I had a broken collarbone and pneumothorax, which can compromise the lungs to the point where you die in a similar way to Covid.

“When the crash happened, the old bill showed up and I was really out of it. People say they can’t recall these things, but in this case I really couldn’t remember what happened.

“On the way back home from the hospital, I said to my wife ‘I thought everyone got breathalysed in a crash’, and she said ‘but you were’. I couldn’t remember any of that.

“There was a genuine loss of memory, purely due to the trauma in those few milliseconds of impact.”

Mr Davidson said as a regular A9 driver, a crash was “statistically bound to happen at some point”.

But he was not the only patient on the major trauma unit to have survived a crash on the A9 - the man in the bed next to him was in a “terrible state” after a head-on collision near Bruar.

When asked if his accident would not have happened had the road been dualled, Mr Davidson said: “Absolutely not - the issue would not have arisen.”

Another person with first-hand experience of the dangers of the road is Murdo Fraser, the Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife.

He suffered multiple fractures and a shattered femur, and had to be cut out of his car. Mr Fraser has previously said the memory of the crash “brings me out in a cold sweat”.

He said: “I grew up in Inverness, so the A9 was always part of Highland life.

“I was travelling up north one Friday night with my then girlfriend, now wife, to see my parents and I was involved in a head-on crash on the single carriageway section near Carrbridge.

“I hit a car coming the other way, but I have no memory of the accident, which is probably just as well. You would never have had a head-on crash on a dual carriageway unless someone drives the wrong way.

“There is so much evidence that dual carriageway roads are many times safer than single carriageways. If anything was to convince me this unsafe road needs upgrading, it is that.”

It does not take being directly involved in a crash to know the horrific impact the road has on those in the Highlands.

Laura Hansler, from Kincraig, has a petition going through the Scottish Parliament to get the Government to commit to dualling the A9 in full.

Her petition led to an inquiry, which found there were still concerns about where the money for the rest of this project is going to come from.

Ms Hansler said: “If I am driving to Perth on the A9, I don’t breathe until I get to Perth. Driving on the M8, the M9 or the M90 doesn’t bother me, but on the A9 you have to watch everything.

“You need eyes on the back of your head. Normally I would get the car radio up and be singing away while I drive, but you just can’t when you’re on the A9.”

Living in Kincraig, Ms Hansler also regularly has to experience emergency services scrambling to respond to accidents on the road.

She said: “The trainline comes through the village and often the helicopters use that to gauge themselves, so we can see them flying pretty low over the town. From my house, you can hear the sirens on the road.

“And if the road is closed, the traffic comes through the village and that damages people’s cars. There are also people sitting in the shadows that we don’t talk about - those who have lost their jobs, their homes, their families because of horrific life-changing injuries.”

Ms Hansler now leads an online community of campaigners who want to see the Scottish Government take more action on the A9 dualling project.

Despite reassurances from Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop the road will be dualled by the new completion date of 2035, Ms Hansler is not hopeful.

“Ministers knew about the delays and chose not to share that with anyone, so I don’t trust the road will be done by 2035,” she said. “I have complete faith in the construction industry, but it is the client that is holding them back.

“It really depends on the Government prioritising this now, because previously the focus was not there at all. We are treated differently in the Highlands - if the same volumes of life-changing injuries and deaths were happening on the M8 or the M9, there would be an absolute uproar, especially if the road was being closed that often.”

Fergus Ewing, the SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, has regularly brought up the plight of his constituents in the Scottish Parliament.

He said: “The project has about 90 per cent support in the Highlands, although others think that rail should be preferred, but the cost of that is even higher.

“The majority of people are for it in the Highlands because huge numbers of people have lost their lives and the road is regularly closed and impassable because of the frequent incidents. There is a strong feeling on this in the Highlands.”