Stretching out for more than 100 miles, some of the worst drivers in the north and north-east can be found taking to its lanes.
Police have now launched a major crackdown on driving standards on the A96, which connects Aberdeen to Moray and Inverness in the north.
As the safety campaign gets underway, officers are dotted up and down the key route as motorists stream up and down the trunk road.
At a spot just south of Inverurie, Constable Stuart Lawrence raises the speed gun to his line of vision and gets to work.
He points north towards the landmark Mither Tap as vehicles – cars, lorries, motorcycles – fastly flow past him heading south towards the Granite City.
At the very same moment, officers stationed in numerous lay-bys and sideroads are on the same mission
Their aim? To filter our the dodgiest drivers on the main link between the north of Scotland’s two biggest cities.
Sergeant Steven Manson said: “It’s the ones who don’t slow at all who worry us. We stop people sometimes and they say ‘Oh, I didn’t see where you were.’ That is quite worrying. We couldn’t be more visible.
“There is always a reason, there is not an excuse. Each individual person will always have a reason why they are travelling at speed.”
During this crackdown alone – which took place from Tuesday to Wednesday last week – a total of 185 vehicles were stopped.
Of this number 53 people were dealt with by officers for flouting the speed limit, and two of them were men travelling at more than 100mph.
A further two men have been dealt with for dangerous driving, including one who was caught undertaking at 93mph.
One person is due in court accused of driving whilst under the influence of drugs whilst nine others were rapped for careless driving offences – such as tailgating, undertaking and travelling slowly in the right lane when the left one was empty.
Also during the operation, four vehicles were seized for not being insured, seven people were caught using their mobile phones whilst behind the wheel and nine were spotted not wearing their seat belts.
Another driver has been charged for driving while under the influence of drugs.
There were also 20 vehicles with defects, two without MOTs and two with no excise licence stopped.
The operation was executed by a combination of the trunk roads policing unit; and Highlands and Islands, Aberdeenshire and Moray and Aberdeen roads policing officers.
A similar operation was recently carried out on the A90, which saw four drivers and a motorcyclist caught at speeds in excess of 100mph.
Srg Manson has been involved in roads policing since 2001, and in his experience of attending crash scenes speed is nearly always to blame.
“A lot of the fatals we go to involve inappropriate driving and driving at speed and drivers not really being aware of what is happening around them,” he said.
“If we do a speed check we will generally catch people speeding. We get people at speeds of over 100mph quite regularly. I don’t know whether it is complacency on the road or what the reason behind it is.
He added: “We’re just trying to slow people down. These things are happening on all the roads in the area and the more we are out the more chance we have of catching these people.
“If there is a problem on a road we’ll try and put a lot of patrols out.”
Constable Lawrence said dangerous driving wasn’t just part of the motoring in the north and north-east – but the whole of the country.
He added: “I don’t think it is an area specific thing, I think it is all over Scotland. This is a national thing.”
The officers are frequently called to the scenes of the fatal accidents.
For both men the worst part of the job is having to knock the front door of a person killed on the road and tell their family members the tragic news.
Srg Manson said: “Normally when police routinely go to the doors the phrase police always use when people see you is “it is nothing to worry about”, but when you are saying your son or daughter died it is totally different.”
Work ongoing across Scotland
The work of the trunk roads unit is not limited to the north and north-east.
As part of the national trunk road policing unit, their work has literally took
Sergeant Manson and Constable Lawrence are called “all over the country” as part of the trunk roads unit.
Just days before the A96 operation, they assisted on the scene of a crash near Perth.
Supporting police teams in all 14 Police Scotland divisions, trunk road officers also contribute to three major road safety operations – Cedar, Whitebeam and Route.
Targeting speeders is only half the battle, the officers said.
Srg Manson added: “We aren’t always targeting speeders, we’re looking at inappropriate driving and poor maintenance of vehicles.”
He added that the zero-tolerance stance on drink-driving adopted by Police Scotland last year had led to a “huge change in relation to what we are detecting”.
He said: “There doesn’t seem to be many people taking the risk any more which is a good thing.”