Road hazard is a synthetic crisis, with human error secretarial for over 90 percent of fortunes, said Bob Joop Goos, chairman of the International Organization for Road Accident Prevention.
“Other than 90 percent of road accidents are initiated by human error. We, hence, have to application on people in our traffic protection programmers,” he quantified at the initial day of the worldwide seminar on ‘The Role of Media in Traffic Safety’ on Wednesday.
Giving to Jose Miguel, chairman of the Portuguese Society for Highway Accidents Anticipation, a road accident is a significance of the quality of the road carriage system or a break in the equilibrium amongst the conservational demand and the driver’s capability to act.
It is, therefore, imperative to “increase the ability of the road users to act in accordance with the needs of the environment,” said Miguel.
The key is focusing on the human element with the “objective of stimulating good (driving) behaviour,” remarked Goos.
“Ninety percent of our road accidents are related to bad driving behavior — driving recklessly and speeding under the influence of alcohol, changing lanes without signaling, driving on the hard shoulder and passing through red lights. I can count 55 behaviors that control driving. If we can influence these, we can modify driver’s behavior,” Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan, Commander-in-chief of the Dubai Police. He cited an incident where a young man asked for a ‘consideration’ for his traffic violations, which amounted to Dh100, 000.
“We have reckless young people. I told him to pay his fines. And in full, not in installments, as a way to teach him a lesson,” Lt Gen Khalfan related.
According to Goos, 1.3 million road deaths occur worldwide every year and more than 50 million people are seriously injured.
And ‘if we continue with the present efforts’, the number of traffic fatalities worldwide will rise by 67 percent over the period of 2000 to 2020, 68 percent in the Middle East and North African region, and 144 percent in Southeast Asia and middle to low-income countries by 83 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) prediction.
