A man was left with serious injuries after a crash on the busy A86 Spean Bridge to Kingussie road shortly before noon yesterday.
The two-vehicle collision, involving a black 4×4 Mercedes car and a van, occurred near to Kinloch Laggan and the road was closed while emergency services attended.
The injured man was taken by ambulance to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
The casualty, understood to have been the driver of the van, was initially thought to have suffered “life-threatening” injuries but his condition was downscaled to “serious” last night.
Motorists waiting to pass the crash site were forced to endure diversions of up to 112 miles, as the road remained closed for much of yesterday afternoon.
The diversion, which took drivers on the A82 and A9 roads via Inverness, forced an additional two hours and 40 minutes of driving time on top of the journey to pass the incident.
Workers from Bear Scotland were on hand to close the road, before lifting all prohibitions at about 5.20pm – just shy of six hours after first reports of the incident were received.
A brief closure did occur after reopening to allow recovery teams to take the vehicles away from the scene but that did not cause any major disruption to passing motorists.
A Bear Scotland spokeswoman said: “We were made aware of an incident on the A86 at Kinloch Laggan, approximately 12 miles south-west of Newtonmore, at 12.15pm.
“Our teams attended the site to assist the police in closing the road to allow the vehicles to be safely recovered and the carriageway cleared.”
