It stretches for more than 100 miles and is one of the north-east’s busiest roads.
With hundreds of cars travelling up and down the A96 Aberdeen-Inverness route every day, it is a blackspot for dangerous and careless driving.
And that is why there are officers patrolling the road every day in an effort to reduce the number of serious or fatal crashes.
Among them are Constables Aaron White and Pete Henderson, who are based at the force’s Inverurie office.
Driving in an unmarked car along the town’s Elphinstone Road, the pair spot an old Transit van passing in the opposite direction.
A quick search using the car’s onboard computer shows the vehicle does not have an MoT or road tax.
Constable Henderson finds a safe spot to turn and accelerates after the van, which has since joined the A96.
The officers eventually catch up with the van at Thainstone Business Park, and discover it also has a broken brake light.
The male driver is issued with a £100 fine and given a stern warning.
It is a relatively quiet day for the pair, but they say there are no guarantees in their job.
Constable White, who has been with the roads unit for four years, said: “It’s not just road traffic incidents that we deal with, quite recently we’ve had quite a lot of seizures of drugs and been involved in the pro-active side of things with taking them off the road.
“Certainly what I’m looking for is cars that don’t look like they’ve been maintained very well, which is quite rare because we’ve been quite lucky with oil and gas that everyone has a nice, new car.
“But it’s mostly down to driver behaviour, what someone does on the road will influence whether I’m looking to stop that person.
“You notice it more in the unmarked car because when everyone sees a marked car they tend to behave.
“There will be something that will catch your eye, and some things will just be in your gut.
“We can check the onboard computer, which tells us who has insurance, MoT, tax – and that’s a good starting point if something has caught your eye and then something else comes up in the system.”
Tomorrow: The Press and Journal speaks to one of the region’s veteran roads policing officers about the often tragic consequences of dangerous driving.
