Those facts have prompted the company in recent years to aggressively seek improvements in highway safety across the Kingdom starting with the Eastern Province and last year launched Saudi Aramco’s most ambitious initiative in decades.
Through the Traffic Safety Signature Program (TSSP), Saudi Aramco’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Relations Abdul Aziz F. Al-Khayyal is championing the cause of improving traffic safety, and he appointed a full-time dedicated team to spearhead the effort.
“What we want all of you to do is become advocates for traffic safety,” TSSP Manager Emad Dughaither told an audience attending a GCC Traffic Safety Week event in Dhahran.
“We want everyone to spread the word about traffic safety to family and friends.”
Some of the more discouraging statistics reported were that the Eastern Province has the second-highest motor vehicle fatality rates in the Kingdom, that only two out of every 10 motorists use their seat belts or make their families wear the life-saving restraints, and that one in three hospital beds across the country is occupied by victims of traffic crashes.
Dughaither noted the company’s long history of supporting the Kingdom on highway matters, but he says this is one of the most orchestrated attempts to make a difference the company has undertaken to date.
“We’re looking at the ‘Four Es’ of traffic safety,” he said. “They are engineering, education, enforcement and dealing with emergencies.”
In the engineering area, Dughaither said the company has redoubled its efforts with the Ministry of Transportation to raise the bar on better and safer design for roads and highways. He said Saudi Aramco has also conducted several traffic-flow and engineering studies on highways.
The important role of education also is a task Saudi Aramco takes on with vigor.
Tens of thousands of youngsters and adults have tried their hand at the company’s traveling hands-on driving simulators, and Saudi Aramco is responsible for creating the first comprehensive driver-training manual in the Middle East, which is now being used in Saudi public schools.
Education is the part of the Saudi Aramco program in which everyone can get involved by talking about traffic safety.
The third E stands for enforcement, and both Traffic Police and Saudi Aramco Industrial Security employees are cracking down on speeders and reckless drivers. The final E stands for emergency care, and Saudi Aramco has been teaching first responders across the Eastern Province in the latest techniques of accident triage and life support for those critical minutes between the crash scene and the hospital.
“The biggest question that remains is how do you change behavior?” Dughaither asked.
“Our biggest challenge yet is how to get people to take the initiative to get involved — how do we make those we care for realize that it is not somebody else’s problem, but that it is your problem and my problem and our problem?”
