minutes
Hamed Khalid opened the meeting with an introduction: “Good morning gentlemen; in this meeting we
are going to discuss car accidents in Abu Dhabi in 2011-2012. In attendance
we have Khalid Al Zaabi -the Head of Police , Hamden Kareem – the chief off
Road Accidents Department, Mubarak Salem – Manager of Emirates Driving
Institute- and me, Hamed Khalid - the secretary of the head of police. First we
will start with the number of car accidents with Hamden Kareem”.
Hamden Kareem handed out some sheets:” Hello
gentlemen, statistics of car accidents and their causes are shown in this
histogram in 2011-2012 and separated into 3 groups. The first group is
accidents that occurred in January to April. As you can see speeding and
ignoring traffic rules are the major causes of accidents with the total number above
8000 accidents. According to records, no accidents were caused from poor road
quality. In the second group which was in summer vacation, it was observed that
most of the accidents were in the highway roads and they fall in 3 major
points, speeding, poor car maintenance and poor road maintenance. In the last
group Sept-Dec, The police patrols and Saaed records showed a lot of surprising
facts; most of the accidents could be avoided if the drivers were obeying
traffic rules”.
An example of poor road maintenance danger was given by
Khalid: “I was driving my car last Friday at 11:00pm near my home and there
was a hole in the street which couldn`t be seen clearly at that moment and I
almost lost control but fortunately I was driving around 35Km/h”.
Another example was given by Hamed:” Our own family driver tried to reach his destination on time by
driving on the road shoulder, so he was caught by police and the car was impounded
for 30 days with 6 black points and a 600 Dhr fine”.
Several questions were asked by Mr. Hedley about these
situations and why do people put their own lives in danger!
Hamden said:” a survey was done and the results were:
1-
46% said to not get late at
work.
2-
29% said to avoid traffic.
3-
14% said they like to drive
fast!
4-
11% others
Chairman of the meeting Khalid moved on to the results of
accidents:” Our nation has lost a lot of future builders in these
accidents. In the second sheet you can have a look at number
of lost souls in last year separated into 3 groups depending on their ages and
the causes of death:
1-
A total of 124 persons passed away because of speeding; most were
between 15 and 30.
2-
A total of 75 persons passed away because of poor car maintenance, mainly
between 31 and 45.
3-
A total of 118 persons passed away because of careless driving especialy between
15 and 30.
4-
A total of 102 persons passed away because of ignoring traffic rules.
5-
A total of 90 persons passed away because of poor road maintenance .
The main
reason that I have arranged this meeting is to reduce the number of car
accidents and to improve our society and provide a safe environment for others
drivers.
Mubarak Salem
introduced himself and said:” We can’t imagine a happy life while a
lot of families and victims are suffering in these situations. According to experts’
researchs, the points that I’m going to offer them now helped a lot to reduce
accidents around the world. The first point is…
1-
Increase the number of awareness
campaigns and do them in different languages.
2-
Increase the amount of fines to show sensible
mean.
3-
Rewards for ideal driving
which is a good motivation.
4-
Increase the number of
police patrols so they can take faster action.
5-
Increase the number of radars
to reduce the space for speeding.
A 10 minutes discussion about these
solutions and other suggestions was provided.
Khalid the chairman thanked the gentlemen
for their time and said these solutions will be done soon and a survey is going
to be done and they will discuss the results in the next meeting.
Everyone left the meeting room at 8:50.
