Road campaign in capital leads to fall in deaths

ABU DHABI // The number of fatalities on the capital's roads last year dropped by a third from the previous year, police said, attributing the good news to an increase in safety awareness campaigns targeting motorists.
There were 276 deaths from traffic accidents in the city in the first nine months of last year, compared with 411 fatalities in 2009 - a fall of almost 17 per cent.
Abu Dhabi's traffic police are so convinced of the merits of their awareness campaigns that they are embarking on a new schools-based initiative to drum good practices into young would-be drivers.
Figures from the Abu Dhabi Police Traffic and Patrols Directorate showed the number of traffic accidents resulting in fatalities or serious injuries dropped by 37 per cent in the capital last year from 2009. The total number of traffic accident-related injuries had decreased almost 40 per cent, from 3,221 in 2009 to 1,935 last year.
Col Hussein al Harethi, the director of the traffic and patrols directorate, said the dramatic falls could be chalked up to concerted efforts to increase traffic safety awareness through campaigns and media messages in the past year.
Compared to 276 messages broadcast in 2009, the traffic police broadcast 1,126 messages last year, a fact officials said could have played a crucial role in improving accident and casualty figures. In the past four years, the number of relayed messages from the traffic police to the public has quadrupled, and deaths from accidents have dropped by almost half, from 17 per 100,000 in 2007 to nine per 100,000 last year.
The average number of combined deaths and serious injuries has decreased from 46 per 100,000 persons, in 2007, to 18 per 100,000 last year - a drop of about 60 per cent.
Last year, the traffic directorate held 11 traffic awareness campaigns, ranging from alerting the public to others' driving mistakes to keeping motorists on heightened awareness during the Eid holiday rush.
Col al Harethi said that sudden turns, speeding and distracted drivers were the top three challenges for police last year.
This year, traffic police officials said they would focus on ingraining driving values from the grass-roots, by educating children through interactive programmes and initiatives. They believe this will help further lower the number of traffic accidents and casualties.
"Studies show that when drivers are educated from a young age about appropriate driving behaviour, the number of road casualties decreases considerably," Col al Harethi said. "One of our goals for 2011 is to increase the level of communication between us and schools."
To do this, officials are working on a campaign entitled Accident-free Schools, which will integrate awareness and practical sessions to teach school pupils proper driving etiquette.
The campaign will extend to schools across the emirate and include parents, bus drivers, staff and faculty. New approaches include placing pupils in a mock crash scenario, where they can learn and observe how police handle traffic accidents.
Maj Awad al Baloushi, the head of the public relations section at the directorate, said police were also working to implement international best practices, mainly from the US and the UK, that would educate future drivers.
"In the US, the best traffic awareness campaigns found that student-to-student teaching approaches are far more effective," he said. "And that is why we would like to assign traffic student leaders at each school. These students would be trained by us and be responsible for spreading the message to their fellow students."
Maj al Baloushi noted an award-winning programme in the US called Teen in the Driver Seat, in which traffic experts provided students with the tools and resources they needed to educate their classmates about appropriate driving behaviour.
Col al Harethi said police would also organise competitions where students would have to apply everything they had learnt to simulated situations.
"We've always used lectures as a method of speaking to students, but we think this approach will be far more effective," he said. "It will actually get them thinking and more involved."
Col al Harethi said that while the numbers indicated tangible improvements in traffic safety levels, they could still drop further. "Our aim is to diminish road accidents as much as possible, and to provide anyone interested with an opportunity to play a role towards this goal."
 
mismail@thenational.ae
 
This article has been altered to reflect that the number of deaths in 2010 was for the first nine months, not the full year as originally reported. This makes the fall in deaths 17 per cent not 33 per cent.
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