Inverness Chamber of Commerce claims people are increasingly reluctant to do business in the north of Scotland because of the A9’s “yellow vultures”.
The body’s chief executive Stewart Nicol warned yesterday that the speeding deterrent threatened to slow up the Highland economy.
And he said the money spent on the devices would have been better invested in the upgrading of the route to dual carriageway.
He said: “Anecdotally, we’re aware of people who are less willing to come to Inverness and the Highlands because it’s so much further and harder to get to because of the cameras.
“There is a danger that people will consider it too difficult or too time consuming to come to Inverness to do business.
“Similarly, for businesses up here it’s taking so much longer to get to the central belt than it perhaps once did – and we cannot condone speeding.”
He added: “There was a very strong play by the government when they put the cameras in that this would reduce accidents and fatalities. I’m not sure it has.
“There have been a number of fatals, a number of serious accidents that have closed the A9. That’s kind of what we had before the cameras went in.
“From the outset, we’d have preferred this money, small though it would have been, to have been put into building the basic infrastructure quicker.”
Mr Nicol said he feared that “a message” was emerging that Inverness was difficult to get to.
He added: “I’ve driven the A9 often enough to still see absolutely crazy driving on it. Before or after the cameras, there’s no difference there.”