Media persons and traffic department officials at a meeting on traffic safety yesterday.
Despite the Traffic Department's efforts to reduce road violations, speeding remains rampant as the most common violation committed on Qatar's roads.
“The most common traffic violation now is speeding. We recently announced about locations of mobile radars so drivers must be cautious and avoid speeding. Other violations compared to this rarely happen," Brig Mohamed Saad Al Kharji, Director-General of the Traffic Department at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said yesterday in a meeting on media's role in supporting traffic safety among society at Traffic department headquarters.
The meeting was attended by representatives of media and the academia who discussed the plans on raising awareness about traffic safety. “Traffic safety is not only the responsibility of Traffic Department. It is the responsibility of all people using the road. That is why we called for this meeting to share ideas with others”, said Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Radi Al Hajri, Director of Media and Awareness.
“We have a project under study to install some awareness screens on intersections, roundabouts and signals in a way so as not to disrupt drivers concentration,” he added.
The participants shared their ideas and suggested that they are ready to help promote traffic safety. They gave proposals to use screens like those in Qatar Foundation to promote traffic awareness through videos about traffic safety.
They also urged the Traffic Department to publish recorded videos of mistakes drivers commit. "Due to economic growth in the coming years we at the Traffic Department expect to face many challenges like the increase in the number of vehicles and licences brought about by increase in population which doubles the stress on roads," Al Hajri added. Aggressive behaviour due to cultural and linguistic differences among drivers have caused road problems such as traffic jams, he said. Despite all this, however, road deaths and accidents have declined.
