Death Trap on Oman Roads
Excluisve by Kay Dan - Daijiworld.com Muscat
Muscat, Sep 1: Alarmed by the rising death toll on Oman's roads, an India-based insurance company has decided to raise awareness about safe and defensive driving.
Last year, there were over 9,000 road accidents in the Sultanate with 600 fatalities and leaving over 6000 people maimed or injured.
Since 2000, some 3,500 people have died on Oman's roads and nearly 50,000 were injured or disabled.
This may be an insignificant number when compared to countries like India, but for Oman, a nation of just over 2.5 million people, this is alarming indeed.
More so, when Oman's road traffic mortality rate is 28 per cent, which is higher than the global average of 19 per 100,000.
With such disturbing trends emerging from statistics compiled by the Royal Oman Police (ROP as the police is known here), The New India Assurance Company Limited has tied up with a safety institute run by the ROP to bring awareness among road users here.
Speeding and negligent driving are, as usual, the most common causes of accidents but it emerges that there also under-aged youngsters without any valid licences who also drive vehicles and cause accidents.
Most cities, towns and villages in Oman boast of excellent well paved road networks making it driving a pleasurable activity. Combine this with comparatively easy availability of modern and powerful cars and cheaper fuel, most of the families own a saloon car or a four wheeled drive sports utility vehicle. (Two-wheelers are a rarity in this part of the world.)
As such youngsters and even school-going kids are always raring to hold a steering wheel at the first opportunity.
And unlike the traffic-clogged and potholes ridden roads in most cities of the Indian sub-continent, roads are smooth and well maintained and have excellent traffic system.
Despite stringent rules to pass a driving test and get a licence, many road users are known to throw not only the rules but also caution to the wind as soon as they are armed with a licence and a car.
"We are worried about the rate of road accidents in Oman and we don't want to have a nation of disabled youth," says Dr J Retnakumar, resident manager of Oman's branch of The New India Assurance Company, which is aiming to raise awareness with a campaign known as 'Drive Safe, Save Life'.
Says Retnakumar: "We have teamed up with The Traffic Safety Institute run by ROP to make concerted efforts to raise the awareness among the people about road accidents and road safety."
As part of the campaign, Retnakumar's company will organise seminars, films and workshops to inculcate the importance of safe driving among road users, specially among corporate drivers. They also plan to award some prizes to drivers of commercial vehicles who have not caused accidents for many years.
"New India Assurance as a part of the insurance sector of Sultanate since 1974 envisages the need of spearheading a campaign in the form of workshops and seminars, in co-ordination with and support of all the regulatory and governing bodies of the Sultanate for inducing awareness in the minds of people on 'Safe and Defensive Driving'," says another official of the company.
The company has roped in the ministry of health and the traffic department of the police to highlight not only the causes of accidents but also the permanent indelible features of accidents like disabilities.
The New India Assurance campaign includes an educational drive in schools and colleges to alert the future drivers about the alarming trend of fatal accidents.
The company also wants the local media to play a major role to highlight this alarming menace. But the role of the media is questionable in this regard because of the state's regulatory curbs on such issues.
There are many ghastly road accidents, a few of which are reported in the local media first hand by the official news agency after getting official clearance. Otherwise most news of accidents are spread by word of mouth. And one will have to wait for the weekly official statement issued by the police in the newspapers. Photographers of the private newspapers are also not allowed to take pictures of any accidents.
The authorities, for their part, have installed radars on the roads to monitor the speed limits and reduced the speed limits. These radars take pictures of number plates of vehicles which are overspeeding on the roads. The number plates are recorded and offenders are then asked to pay the fine when they submit their car documents for annual registration every year.
The traffic department has reduced the maximum speed limits on some roads to 80 kmph. But still, when the average permissible speed limit on most roads is 100 kmph, there are bound to be accidents.
Because accidents by definition are not pre-planned.
Read KAY DAN exclusive on Daijiworld