Driver fined for 100mph crash on wrong side of A9

An 87-year-old man who caused a head-on crash on the A9 by speeding on the wrong side of the road has been banned and fined.

Retired company finance manager Alan Andrew ignored his wife’s repeated warnings about oncoming vehicles before the pile-up on the busy trunk road.

He claimed he had been blinded by the “vivid” sunlight but had decided to keep driving straight on in the moments before the 100-mile-per-hour impact.

Perth Sheriff Court heard that Andrew’s Range Rover Sport hit a Kia Ceed so hard that it knocked the whole engine flying clean out of the vehicle.

Andrew, from Shipley in West Yorkshire, was returning from his holiday home in the Black Isle when he caused the 42-year-old Kia driver life-changing injuries.

Sheriff Elisabeth McFarlane found Andrew guilty of causing serious injury by driving dangerously on the A9 near House of Bruar on December 31, 2023.

She fined him £3,000 and banned him from driving for 12 months, as well as ordering him to resit the extended driving test if he ever drives again.

“I have no difficulty in accepting your driving that day fell well below the standard of a competent driver,” the sheriff told him.

“Whilst I accept you were temporarily blinded by the sun, what concerns me is your reaction to that and how long it took you to react.

“You told me you drove 300 or 400 yards – a significant distance – at 50 miles per hour with three cars coming towards you, which significantly, your wife saw when she was seated right beside you in the same car.

“She saw the cars coming towards you and alerted you to that three times, and you took no evasive action.”

Andrew told the court: “There was a strong flash of sunshine. It came across the road and from then on I could hardly see a thing. The sun was absolutely vivid.

“I went round the bend and it made it worse. At the end of the bend I had a horrible feeling I couldn’t see at all. I realised I was completely blind.

“My first thought was not to panic. I had the presence of mind to try and keep the car fairly straight so anyone on the road could see it.

“My wife shouted out ‘there’s a car coming towards us…it’s still coming towards us…it’s getting closer and closer’ and then she said ‘it’s going to hit us’.

“A couple of seconds later there was this enormous bang. It tore the front wing completely off.”

The court was shown dashcam footage taken by an off-duty police officer of the victim’s car being sent spinning across the road and colliding with a third vehicle.

The court was told the Kia driver, a tourist guide, was found to be “groaning” and unable to speak as a result of the injuries which he had sustained.

The guide told the court he had sustained a traumatic brain injury, a broken ankle, and seven broken ribs and required two operations and extensive rehab.

He said his memory had been impacted as a result of the injuries and he had been off work for several months as well as the accident hastening the end of his relationship.

Fiona Fraser, 62, was driving the VW Tiguan behind the tour guide’s car and her vehicle was also damaged, although she and her husband were not injured.

“We came round the corner and were aware of it coming towards us,” she said. “We were maybe going at 50 to 55mph.”

She said that after the crash she went to help Andrew, whose car was balanced down an embankment, and he said “the sun had been in his eyes”.

Andrew said he had been driving for 66 years and the court was told that a civil claim over the accident injuries was also still ongoing.