Viewed from afar, the crashes from five years’ worth of data appear to cover the entire length of the A96.
We have analysed Department for Transport data on more than 100 crashes as part of our investigation into the stretch of road between Aberdeen and Inverness.
To determine where crashes happen most frequently, we created an accident blackspot heatmap.
The heatmap is based on the density of crashes within a one-kilometre radius.
Larger numbers or more closely clustered crashes within that radius appear with a darker shade.
Take a closer look at the most prominent A96 crash blackspots on the map.
A96 crash blackspots in and around Aberdeen
Looking closer at the heatmap, blackspot clusters of crashes appear within Aberdeen and past Colpy (3 miles north of Insch).
It encapsulates five crashes, two in 2019, and one in 2020, 2022 and 2023. Three of the collisions occurred by the Causewayend junction.
Three of those crashes overlap and the heatmap indicates the hidden points with a white number.
All five of the crashes took place in 2022 or 2023. Three were classed as serious, the remainder were slight accidents.
Both of the crashes that took place in 2023 were serious.
This cluster includes a fatal crash in November of 2019. Both of the collisions in 2023 were classed as serious.
In 2024, we reported a teenage boy was hospitalised after a crash by the Bucksburn roundabout.
Officers shut a section of the A96 in the southbound direction for more than two hours after the crash in the evening of August 20.
Travelling further west to Huntly
These crashes, all classed as slight, have a stronger heatmap density due to proximity of the one in 2019 and 2023.
These accidents happened in 60mph sections of the road and officers classed two of them as serious.
In January 2023, two pensioners were hospitalised after a five-vehicle crash near the junction for Morgan McVeigh’s at Colpy.
The 2023 collision was serious and involved eight vehicles.
However, 15 vehicles crashed in 2021 but the incident was classed as slight.
A96 crash blackspots from Huntly to Nairn
Travelling further west, there are some three denser sections around Elgin and a number near to Nairn.
From left to right, the first cluster occurred west of Hay Street, two were in 2023. The two to the west of this accident blackspot were serious.
The next darker spot on the heatmap is near Pansport Road – split into two serious and two slight incidents.
In the final cluster there were three serious crashes which took place in 2023 near the Lhanbryde West Roundabout.
Three of the crashes took place in 2022 – with one almost directly over the location of a 2019 crash.
A crash in 2020, involving a single vehicle, was fatal in this cluster.
Fabian Hall died after he was hit by a vehicle on February 29 2020.
The Department for Transport data classed two of those accidents as serious and both took place in 2023. The third was a fatal crash in 2022.
Meanwhile, one crash occurred slightly further east, by Broombank Road junction, in 2019.
That included a multi-vehicle crash outside the town on December 16 of 2023.
Nairn to Inverness
Finally, approaching Inverness, there are two more stand-out clusters on the heatmap.
Half of them took place in 2023.
Overall, two thirds of them were serious and one third were slight collisions.
The serious collision on Boxing Day of last year involved five vehicles.
Do more A96 crashes happen in urban or rural areas?
Quite a few of the blackspots on our heatmap align with more densely inhabited areas such as city or town boundaries.
The prompted the question of whether crashes are more likely to happen in urban or rural areas.
Using the Scottish Government spatial data on localities, we evaluated whether each crash on the map sits within a locality.
Urban sections of the A96 are those that pass through or are immediately adjacent to larger settlements such as towns and cities.
Only around quarter of the road‘s length runs through these larger settlements (25.35%).
We categorised the remainder of the road as rural – accounting for 74.65% of the 160 km road.
In total, from 2019 to 2023, 78 crashes happened within or immediately adjacent to larger settlements or urban areas. The remaining 101 incidents happened in rural areas.
Of the urban areas, Aberdeen had the most crashes with 29. The Granite City had the most crashes in 2023 with 12.
It is followed by Nairn and Elgin, both with 10 crashes between 2019 and 2023.
Inverness, while the only other city on the list, only had four crashes.
Read further analysis of A96 crashes with our data deep dive or find our tracker where our live reporters will keep you up to date on known crashes.
Methodology
We used Department of Transport Road Safety Data to find the collisions on the A96 in the past five years.
The data was filtered by the road number to extract the crashes on the major road between Aberdeen and Inverness.
To create a heatmap showing the A96 crash blackspots, we used mapping software QGIS to calculate the density of crashes within a one-kilometre radius.
Scottish Government spatial data on localities was applied to a vector of the A96 road and the points of the crashes for further urban versus rural analysis.
Conversation