Roads maintenance group BEAR Scotland came under fire after a day of black ice carnage on the A90 on Monday.
Police were called to a catalogue of accidents in Angus, the Mearns and Aberdeenshire from around 7am, as motorists struggled to cope with treacherous conditions on the high-speed route.
Vehicles littered the roadside from Brechin to beyond Stonehaven, with some having flipped and come to rest on the central reservation.
Courier reader Gary Johnston, from Dundee, reported the chaos after counting a dozen separate accidents on his morning drive to Aberdeen.
He said: “I have just been up to Aberdeen and back to Dundee and I counted 12 incidents involving vehicles on their roofs in the middle of roads, in fields and everywhere else you can imagine.”
Mr Johnston questioned whether the gritters had been sent out by BEAR Scotland, who are responsible for main arterial routes.
However, a BEAR spokeswoman said: “We pre-treated the A90 last night as our forecasts had predicted low temperatures. Our team were also out patrolling and treating as necessary overnight in a bid to keep the road as safe as possible.”
Although the gritters were out, BEAR admitted that some weather conditions can impact the pre-treatments.
North East MSP Alex Johnstone said: “This situation, which appears to take organisations responsible for gritting our roads by surprise each year, must surely lead to a review of procedure and practice to ensure that road treatments are effective.
“I doubt that we will have seen the worst of the weather yet, so it is important that the transport minister Keith Brown makes sure that everything that can be done, is being done make our roads safe.”
At around 7.40am, a Nissan Primera crashed off the A90 near the Fordoun turnoff. Just five minutes later a woman was taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary after her Fiat 500 left the road near the Auchenblae junction.
At 8.30am a Mini and Jaguar crashed near Temple of Fiddes and in a separate incident a van overturned in the same area.
Police confirmed officers attended two early morning incidents near the bends south of Finavon.
Four cars were involved in two separate collisions between Forfar and Brechin just after 8am.
Another car was seen on its side after coming off the road at Newton of Millhouse by Brechin.
At around 9am officers were called to a Silver Hyundai which had left the road near the Pitskelly turnoff. Nobody was seriously injured in any of the incidents.
In Dundee, a number of cars skidded off the road in Baxter Park Terrace during the morning rush hour.
The Met Office issued a further warning to drivers across Tayside and Fife, expecting the mercury to dip as low as -5C overnight and into this morning.