Traffic plan brings down road deaths

There has been a drop in the number of traffic-related casualties from 479 deaths in 2003 to 249 in 2013 and a decline in the number of serious injuries from 1,546 to 809 during the same period.
The findings were announced during a meeting of the Higher Committee for Traffic Safety in Riyadh on Saturday.
Ibrahim bin Mohammed Al-Sultan, project and planning president at the High Commission for Riyadh Development (HCRD), made a presentation during which he came out with the above figures. The meeting was chaired by Riyadh Gov. Prince Khalid bin Bandar and attended by his deputy, Prince Turki bin Abdullah, at the headquarters of the HCRD.
Al-Sultan said the meeting reviewed the progress achieved in the fifth year of the “operational plan” for traffic safety for Riyadh (2003-2013). He briefed the meeting on the tasks accomplished within the time frame of the plan and follow-up measures on pending issues.
The fifth year of the Second Five-Year Plan was reviewed and the progress achieved was noted in terms of strategic goals. The success was measured by a sharp decline in the number of road fatalities and serious injuries.
Al-Sultan said the use of key global parameters indicated that the casualty rate has declined over the years following the implementation of the traffic control strategy. The number came down from 3.5 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in 2004 to 0.69 percent by the end of the year 2012 despite an annual increase in the number of vehicles and frequency of traffic in the city.
He noted that these positive results contributed to the reduction of socioeconomic losses due to traffic accidents, the occupancy of the number of hospital beds and reliance on modern technology for traffic control. Other factors were the streamlining of traffic management and less response time in reaching accident sites.
Al-Sultan added that since the launch of the strategic plan, the HCRD had been keen on setting up a “database of traffic” through a specialized system for information analysis of traffic accidents in the city, including details of the incident, the vehicle, victims and providing a road map of the routes using GPS to identify accident-prone roads and intersections for action by authorities.
A special force has also updated control centers and operating rooms for road security in the capital and to determine traffic accident-prone sites along highways.
He also referred to a special project which aims to connect and unify operating room systems (ORS) in six different divisions: the Riyadh Region Traffic Department, the Riyadh Municipality, the Saudi Red Crescent Authority, the Ministry of Transport, the Department of Civil Defense in Riyadh and the Road Security Force. This will ensure the rapid exchange of information and increase the speed of responses to the accident and emergency calls received by these entities, in addition to the establishment of an integrated database of information and accurate statistics on such incidents.