DOZENS of motorists have been warned about their driving on one of Scotland's busiest tourist trails.
It follows concerns that the North Coast 500 - dubbed Scotland's answer to America's Route 66 - is being used as a racetrack by some drivers.
At the weekend 85 motorists were pulled over by police along the North Coast 500 with 45 given warnings including 12 who have been reported to the procurator fiscal. Nearly one in 12 were caught speeding.
There have been regular complains by locals about driving behaviour on the scenic route.
Highlands and Islands Police Division visited the A9, A99 and A836 during the crackdown.
On the division's Facebook account one follower Essie Stewart wrote: "Good it's about time something was done about the Morgan's that treat this road as a racetrack."
Paul Maden, who co-owns the popular Cocoa Mountain at Durness in Sutherland - one of the key NC500 pit stops - said this summer had been "very busy".
"For us it has been a record breaking summer with more tourists, and some people do abuse and not respect the route.
"I must admit that I now do not make a journey after 7am or before the evening, but we can't have it both ways.
"The NC500 has been an outstanding success in bringing prosperity and jobs to the area and it's just a pity that some drivers abuse it. But it is a minority who do upset others and cause problems but better infrastructure, including road widening is needed as well as better driver education of the route.
"Drivers dawdling and not letting people pass is as big a problem as those speeding. It is about doing the route not too fast and not too slow."
Jan Morse added: "Way more annoying on the NC500 are the motorhomes (and other vehicles) doing 20mph and not pulling over to let anyone past."
Sheena Cameron wrote:"About time some folk think its a one way race track."
Màiri MacKinnon added: "Fantastic. Far too many eejits driving on these roads."
Ewan MacKeachan replied: "Unfortunately, there are some who are selfish enough to treat the public roads as their own personal 'track' and expect everyone else to give them 'free passage'.
"It's unacceptable and not on. We all 'speed' from time to time but some of the the standards of driving goes way beyond simple speeding. Want to 'go for it'? Get a competition licence and let's see how good you really are at Knockhill, against the others."
Since the route was launched in 2015 it has brought 29,000 more visitors to the Highlands and added £9m to the region's economy, according to a previous study commissioned by Highlands and Islands Enterprise. That total has since increased.
A fifth of the road trip - hailed among the best in the world by CNN among others - is on single track road.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel