(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Sixty to 75 percent of the Qataris who die in road accidents are young men, according to a healthcare expert.
Most of them are aged between 10 and 29 years, said Dr Rafael Consunji, Injury Prevention Director Hamad Medical Corporation.
They make up to two percent of the population but comprise 35 to 45 percent of all road accident victims, and these accidents account for 11 to 12 percent of deaths, he said while presenting the findings of a study on road safety in Qatar at the third Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Road Safety Forum, which opened yesterday.
The forum discusses road safety, challenges and solutions in the Middle East's transportation and infrastructure industries. Together with officials from Public Works Authority (Ashghal) and Ministry of Interior, many experts from different countries present their experience and suggestions at the forum.
Yousef Abdulrahman Al Emadi, Director of roads operations and maintenance department at Ashghal said that since the launch of National Road Safety Strategy in 2013 all road projects in the country strictly follow safety guidelines and accredited road safety auditors are appointed for monitoring.
"The Work Zone Traffic Management Guide launched by Ashghal has helped to significantly reduce road accidents at work sites," he added.
The first ITS & Road Safety Awards were also presented for outstanding contribution in road safety.
Kulluna safety campaign by the Hamad International Training Centre (HITC) was given the Industry recognition award for outstanding road safety implementation for the car seat safety project. The award was received by the campaign head Dr Khalid Abdulnoor Saifeldeen and his team.
Ashghal was awarded for outstanding partnership for road safety improvement.
Khalaf Amri of Petroleum development Oman won best engineering Innovation, while Husum Musharbash, President and CEO of Traffic Tech too the award for most innovative ITS implementation.
Saudi's Aramco's Sultan Al Zahrani Director of the Traffic Safety signature Programme and secretary general for eastern province traffic safety council received the best youth engagement programme, while Virginia commonwealth University Qatar, Mersk Oil and Ministry of Interior were awarded for best public awareness campaign one second.
The two day forum also discuss about how to integrate safety into the design and delivery of an exponentially growing road and transport network, methods to determine and enforce effective policies that will influence safer driver behavior, how to develop engaging public awareness campaigns that will inspire the prioritization of road safety, ways to adopt a holistic approach to ITS to ensure all networks operate efficiently and how to incorporate traffic management systems to improve levels of safety.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.