NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL

 
'Speeding towards an early grave' – an expert's view on the UAE's road safety

ABU DHABI - JULY 05: The deaths of three young sisters on Airport Road last week should act as a wake-up call to improve road safety, an expert on traffic accidents said yesterday.

“It has to be an example,” said Mohammed el Sadig, a researcher at UAE University in Al Ain who has conducted studies on road crashes.

“We have to use really any possible means of convincing the population to cool the speed they drive with and see if that will reflect really positively on the roads.”

Such incidents should not be allowed to die with the victims, he added.

Mr el Sadig was one of a number of experts from the UAE and abroad asked to identify road safety issues as part of The National’s “Road to Safety” campaign, which was prompted by the deaths of the sisters, aged four, six and seven, on Monday in an accident involving what officials said was a speeding car.

The experts called for drivers to be educated about the result of car crashes, and for roads to be designed to protect pedestrians better.

Deaths and injuries could also be reduced by cutting drivers’ speed and increasing the number of people wearing seat belts, they said. Parents should strap children into child safety seats and motorists avoid mobile phone conversations when driving.

Irresponsible behaviour and a lack of respect for other road users accounts for nearly 23 per cent of traffic crashes in the capital, according to Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD), which last month launched its own road safety campaign, “Drive Safe – Save Lives”.

Mr el Sadig said that while getting people to behave better behind the wheel was paramount, it would not be easy. Many factors – including culture and education – were involved.

However, getting motorists to understand that driving a vehicle is a complex task requiring attentiveness was very important.

“I think people really don’t understand that driving is tough. Using motor vehicles poses a lot of risk.”

Crashes were actually rare and “99 per cent of the population do not really know what happens during one,” Mr el Sadig said. “It is harsh.”

With reports showing that the UAE has one of the highest rates of road deaths, various authorities are ramping up efforts to reduce the toll. Last year, 1,071 people died on the roads and 12,273 were injured.

Organisations including Health Authority-Abu Dhabi, the National Transport Authority, the Ministry of Interior’s traffic department and local police forces, as well as corporate partners, are all working to make things safer.

An example of this co-ordination is the Salama Road Safety Public Awareness Initiative, involving several private companies, non-governmental organisations and government departments. It highlights the dangers of reckless driving, especifically among young Emiratis.

Normand Labbe, the managing director of the Emirates Institute for Health and Safety, said he believed further co-ordination, linking the three Es of road safety – engineering, education and enforcement – would go some way towards improving safety on the roads.

“The good part is, there are people in organisations trying to create positive change, mobilised by the fact there are statistics to show we have one of the highest road fatality rates,” he said.

Today The National takes a closer look at the issues experts see as priorities in improving road safety.

Speed

This is the biggest factor in traffic accidents, according to Waseen Iqbal, a senior lecturer and assessment examiner at the Emirates Driving Institute in Dubai. Statistics from Abu Dhabi police back him up.

In spite of increased penalties for breaking the speed limit, a total of 138,919 motorists were caught driving excessively fast in Abu Dhabi between January 1 and April 5 this year, representing 56 per cent of traffic cases.

“Most of the time, this is a big factor in Dubai,” Mr Iqbal said. “Youngsters are in very powerful vehicles and getting into huge accidents.”

Young men in particular tend to speed excessively and die in cars. According to HAAD figures for 2007, 89 per cent of those who died were male.

Mr Iqbal noted that the severity of injuries increases exponentially with vehicle speed.

High speeds in urban areas also contributed to the large number of motorists jumping red lights, which has been identified by Abu Dhabi police as the second biggest cause of crashes.

Mr Iqbal said he told his students they should abide by the speed limits and leave a two-second following distance from the vehicle ahead, which should leave room for an emergency stop without a collision.

To get people to slow down, Mr Iqbal recommended even tougher penalties for speeding and more radar enforcement and demonstrations of the impact of car crashes at high speeds.

Mr el Sadig recommended introducing speed humps and other traffic calming measures in busy areas, and lowering speed limits.

“I don’t see any reason why the speed inside our towns needs to be anything beyond 50kph at maximum,” he said.

Tami Toroyan, a World Health Organisation technical officer, recommended the same reduction in the speed limit when presenting the WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety last month.

Seat belts / child seats

Seat belt compliance in the UAE is poor and too few children are properly restrained in vehicles, authorities have said.

For instance, in Abu Dhabi only 11 per cent of Emiratis and 44 per cent of expatriates wear seat belts, according to the HAAD.

While drivers and front-seat passengers can be fined Dh400 and receive four black points for not wearing a seat belt, under the federal traffic law there is no requirement for passengers in the rear to buckle up.

Similarly, while children under 10 years of age may not ride in front, there is no federal law requiring parents to fit children in appropriate restraints on the back seat.

The National Transport Authority, however, is considering making child safety restraints compulsory, a move supported by Michael Grivna, a researcher at the UAE University in Al Ain who has conducted studies into child injuries.

“In a traffic crash, if a child is not restrained it could be like a bullet,” he said. “The child could even kill someone in the front seat.”

Alia Salik, from Right to Live, a non-profit group promoting child safety in transport in the UAE and Middle East, said that barriers to a federal law included finding solutions for low-income families who might find an appropriate restraining system such as a car seat prohibitively expensive.

However, her group wanted to see such a law in the UAE, she said.

According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, properly installed child safety seats reduce the risk of fatal injuries by 71 per cent for infants and 54 per cent for toddlers.

The National Transport Authority has teamed up with Safe Kids Worldwide, Chevrolet and Unicef to launch a 10-year programme to encourage parents to strap children into seats in the back of the car.

In the UK, children up to the age of 12 or up to 135cm tall must travel in the correct child restraint, whether that is a child seat or a booster cushion that ensures a seat belt is fitted properly.

Doug Hayward, a traffic expert from the UK who is advising Abu Dhabi’s police on ways to reduce accidents, said one thing he would like to see changed was a law making seat belts compulsory both in the front and the back.

However, getting drivers to comply would take a sustained effort, said Richard Cuerden, the programme developer manager at the Transport Research Laboratory in the UK.

Even in Britain, where there had been concerted efforts to improve seat belt use since it was made mandatory for front-seat users in 1983, Mr Cuerden said five per cent of people were still not bothering with them, and 30 per cent of drivers and front passengers who died in accidents were not using a seat belt.

Since 1991, passengers in the back seat in Britain have also had to wear seat belts.

Mr Cuerden said buckling up in both the front and back seats was important because while passengers in the back might feel protected by the seats ahead of them, a crash can be over in an instant.

“If you crash head on at 50kph you can’t stop yourself,” he said. “The car will stop and you will be continuing at 50kph.”

Mobile phones

The penalty for using a hand-held mobile phone while driving is Dh200 and four black points, yet motorists continue to conduct phone conversations as they drive.

Dubai Police issued 2,005 fines for the offence in January and February, compared with 2,552 last year when the monthly average was 212.

In Abu Dhabi, police handed out 2,158 nes between January 1 and March 12 this year. A theme during Gulf Traffic Week last month was “Don’t call until you arrive”.

Mr Iqbal said driving while talking on the phone was one of the main causes of accidents in Dubai.

“The main thing is the concentration,” he said. “You get a ring on the mobile and you are taking a call, you are losing your concentration.”

Studies show that talking on a mobile phone, whether hand-held or hands-free, makes a driver four times more likely to be involved in an accident.

Other studies conducted in a driving simulator at Britain’s Transport Research Laboratory found that people’s reaction times are slowed and driver’s eyes become fixed on the road ahead.

People driving and talking also had a harder time maintaining position in their driving lane.

It is more distracting than listening to the radio or chatting with a passenger because passengers can see the road conditions and moderate their conversation accordingly, said Nick Reed, a human factors researcher at the laboratory.

Protection for road users

While the car is king in the UAE, every journey begins and ends on foot, which is why more needs to be done to protect people when they are out of their vehicles, according to Mr el Sadig, from the UAE University.

“We have to remember that we built our towns to live in and we built our towns for our kids, not for drivers to use it for racing,” he said.

“We have to remember that half of the population are vulnerable road users, including kids and women.

“Most of the times we are also pedestrians. So what I am saying is for our own safety, we shouldn’t be really selfish at the moment we drive.”

There were 26 pedestrians killed crossing Abu Dhabi’s roads in the first 71 days of this year, while 117 were injured. In Dubai, 24 were killed.

Last year 663 pedestrians in Abu Dhabi were struck by cars, up from 583 in 2007. Dubai saw the most pedestrian/vehicle incidents, with 754 compared with 665 the year before. Across the country, there were 2,138 such accidents, compared with 2,022 the year before.

Children make up a significant portion of the total run-over deaths. In Abu Dhabi, 1,112 died after being struck by vehicles between 2001 and 2007.

Unpublished research by Mr el Sadig into crashes in Al Ain involving vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, shows that group accounted for 20 per cent of deaths and injuries. Town planning that gives preference to vehicle mobility over safety, combined with a lack of safe routes and crossings for pedestrian and cyclists, increased pedestrians’ exposure to accidents, he said.

“The way forward is to modify the town planning, to connect it to the public transportation,” he said. “Also, we need more attention to be paid to build safe crossings at junctions.”

Danish studies showed that providing segregated bicycle tracks or lanes alongside urban roads cut deaths among cyclists by 35 per cent.

Dramatic drop in food prices

ABU DHABI - JULY 05: The prices of almost all staple food items in the capital’s supermarkets have dropped over the past 12 months, leading to cheaper and cheaper shopping baskets.

While inflation grew quickly in the capital this time last year, with some items increasing in price by almost 200 per cent, the opposite is true this year.

And while there remains some way to go before food prices drop to their pre-inflation levels, dramatic reductions are evident.

In particular, the prices of a number of imported fresh goods have dropped considerably – with tomatoes imported from the Netherlands falling by up to 45 per cent in some supermarkets.

The food price survey this week is the seventh conducted by The National since March 2008. It looked at the prices of similar items in the LuLu supermarket in Al Wahda Mall, Carrefour in Marina Mall and the Abu Dhabi Co-operative Society in Abu Dhabi Mall.

The changes are in line with reassurances made by the Ministry of Economy that more supermarket items would become cheaper over the first few months of the year.

In the corresponding period last year, the price of red onions imported from India more than doubled in some supermarkets, and remained at a high level for long afterwards.

For the first time in a year, onions have become cheaper in all three supermarkets, dropping 45 per cent in the last quarter alone in Carrefour, from Dh2.75 per kg in March to Dh1.50 – a reduction of 23 per cent since July 2008.

At LuLu, they fell 27 per cent since March, and 13 per cent over the year; at the Co-op, they fell 23 per cent in the last quarter and by six per cent in a year.

Locally produced fresh goods, especially tomatoes, remain relatively expensive compared with the same period last year.

But Dutch tomatoes in Carrefour are now 34 per cent cheaper per kilogram than three months ago, and year on year. A year ago, one kilogram of Dutch tomatoes cost Dh23.50 in LuLu; the same would be only Dh12.95 now, a drop of 45 per cent.

The same product is 21 per cent cheaper in the Co-op than three months ago, but only four per cent less than last year.

Bananas from the Philippines are the only fresh imported goods not to have significantly changed price since July 2008.

Most items, including Arabic bread, milk, rice, sugar and Australian lamb, have dropped in price or remained stable in all supermarkets since March this year.

Only items produced in the Middle East, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, have risen in price over the past three months, albeit only nominally. Earlier this year, Dr Hashim al Neaimi, the head of the consumer protection department with the Ministry of Economy, said the ministry was liaising with supermarket chains to ensure that food prices were falling, and thus accurately reflecting international trends.

Inspectors also conduct field tours in stores across the Emirates to check that prices are fair.

Having witnessed small reductions in price at the start of the year, Dr al Neaimi said greater co-operation between suppliers, vendors and the ministry should ensure “even lower prices in the coming period”.

Susanna Dias, 24, a Filipina office assistant, said she had noticed changes in the prices of some products.

“It is a change, but only very small,” she said. “I see it, but it is too small to make a big difference. When you are buying tea and these things, it is more expensive, so the money I spend is not different.” She estimated that she spent between Dh150 and Dh200 a week on groceries, mostly on fresh food items.

Jason Morrissey, a 33-year-old British broker, moved to the UAE at the peak of food inflation last summer. While shopping at Carrefour, he said: “I guess it’s only right that everything is falling. Everything seemed really expensive when I moved here. Most things are imported, so it makes sense.

Abu Dhabi bans lorries during rush hours

ABU DHABI - JULY 05:  Starting today, lorries and heavy vehicles weighing above 2.5 tonnes will be prohibited from entering the city, and from a section near Al Raha Beach, between 6am and 8am and between 1pm and 3pm, the Ministry of Interior announced on Saturday.

Drivers who break the rules face fines and having their vehicles impounded. The move is intended to ease pressure on the island’s roads, which have seen an increase in lorries and the Salam Street development combining in recent months to create long rush-hour traffic jams. The ban does not apply on public holidays and at weekends. Officials did not say how long the ban would last.

Businesses in the Tourist Club area said they hoped the move would bring customers back. Some shops have reported a drop in profit because traffic jams are keeping their customers away.

Lorry drivers caught breaking the ban will be fined Dh1,000 (US$270) and have their vehicles impounded for seven days.

Repeat violations will result in another Dh1,000 fine and a 14-day impoundment. Drivers will be given eight points on their licences upon each violation. Lorries will also be prohibited from stopping on the sides of major roads during the restricted periods.

A notice posted by the ministry in newspapers yesterday said the move was necessary because of the “growing number of development projects and roadworks, and in order to improve traffic movement within the city of Abu Dhabi”.

Lida Rizu, a waitress in a cafe in Abu Dhabi Mall, said she hoped the ban would help her get to work more easily. Since the roadworks began, she said, she has had trouble finding a taxi that would take her to the area.

“Some days, five or six taxis will just refuse to take me to work,” she said. “Now it’s so hot, it’s been very difficult.”

Shivani Adalja, a consultant interior designer at the Liv-in furniture showroom, across the street from Abu Dhabi Mall, hoped the measures would encourage people to come to the area.

“Many of my clients I have to go and meet in other parts of town now,” she said. “They just don’t want to come over here any more. A five-minute journey has become half an hour now.”

Azad Farook, an administration manager for Expolanka Freight’s Salam Street office, said the changes would adversely affect his haulage company because vital container deliveries took place during the early hours at Port Zayed.

“With the loading and offloading time, these hours are exactly when we need to get on the roads,” he said.

“We will not be able to take as many containers now, which will mean we lose business as we just won’t be able to deliver them.”

He said the new rules would make it almost impossible, in many cases, to deliver on time.

“We just won’t be able to customise requests for early delivery,” he said. “They will mostly have to take place after 3pm now.”

Mr Farook said the company might be able to receive only one delivery a day instead of five or six.

The new rules will affect lorries leaving development projects around the city, such as those on Reem and Sowwah islands and Al Raha Beach.

The changes are also likely to affect the construction access to the Formula One site on Yas Island.

Aldar, which is developing Al Raha Beach, said it was too early to assess the impact of the legislation, while Sorouh, which is developing Reem Island, was unavailable for comment.

In the Tourist Club area, some workers hoped the ban would ease their journey to work in the morning, while stores reliant on morning deliveries said the impact would be felt immediately.

The Abu Dhabi Co-Operative Society supermarket in Abu Dhabi Mall relies on fresh deliveries in the early hours.

Hesham Mustafa, a supervisor at the Co-op, said: “Our fish and meat all arrives around 7am, so I don’t know what will happen.”

Wagih Mansour, who runs the marina area beside Abu Dhabi Mall, said the changes had come too late to help the local businesses, some of which have suffered 40 per cent losses since the closures began.

The marina has been threatened with closure to make way for development of the bridge to Sowwah Island. “It will make no difference now,” he said.

“We will never be able to make up for the money we’ve lost here. The legislation just comes too late to make any difference.”

In the Al Raha Beach area, projects such as the Aldar waterfront city and Al Danar financial district have seen the stretch of road between Sas al Nakl to Al Shahama become congested through much of the day.

Jamie Leach, a lawyer who drives from Dubai Marina to Abu Dhabi each day, said: “Every day I see an accident on that stretch,” he said. “The added weight of construction traffic has made the journey impossible compared to six months ago.”