The A82 got a surprise mention on a popular Canadian podcast, but the quotes will not be adorning a VisitScotland billboard anytime soon.
The Steve Dangle podcast is usually focused on the Toronto Maple Leafs, professional ice hockey in the NHL and life in Canada in general.
But to the surprise of anyone listening from the north of Scotland, a bit of shade was thrown at the road around Loch Ness in a recent episode.
It’s probably deserved shade, in fairness. The A82’s accident record has regularly seen it dubbed the most dangerous in Scotland.
And it is particularly bad during the tourist season when the stretch between Inverness and Drumnadrochit is jammed with tour buses, lorries travelling at 40mph and blind bends aplenty.
What was said about the A82?
The comments followed a discussion about an ice hockey player laughably being nicknamed “the seaweed man”.
It moved to deciding whether or not the Loch Ness Monster would be a better fit, and if Nessie is friendly or not.
Steve Dangle, who has 198,000 subscribers on Youtube and more than 54 million video views, said: “The most dangerous thing about Loch Ness is the roads.
“It’s the first place I ever saw a car flip over live. The roads are wild, absolutely wild.
“It’s full of locals going ‘ah, speed up’. And because it’s like three feet wide, you get flipped.
“I saw a guy climbing out of his window [after an accident].
“You just keep looking at the water.”
Podcast co-hosts Adam Wylde and Jesse Blake are no experts on the area either. Asking Dangle if he had “been to the town of Loch Ness” gave that away.
But it’s a good representation of how driving on the A82 must feel to people not familiar with it.
Particularly if you’re coming from North America, where many roads are absurdly big by comparison.
The hard facts about the A82
Between 2016 and 2020, there were 387 accidents on the A82. And between 2010 and 2020, 50 people lost their lives on the route.
It also seems to be either it or the A9 being dubbed the most dangerous in Scotland.
But unlike the A9, the A82 does not have an obvious solution in the pipeline.
Dualling will not prevent every accident, but it will make things safer.
The geography of the A82 makes that less practical, though campaigners have asked for Transport Scotland to explore adding more overtaking lanes.
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