NewsletterNovember2008

"The United Nations General Assembly and the World Health Organisation.......started the global battle against trauma caused by road accidents, and we hope that all sectors of our societies will cooperate to achieve this noble humanitarian objective." (His Majesty, Qaboos bin Said, Sultan of Oman, World Report 2004)

Do you think we could be doing more and better to save innocent lives on our roads but don't know where to start? One Life, Your Choice brings you the best and next road safety practices, campaigns and resources from around the world condensed and delivered direct to your desktop. Share ideas, tips and resources with your family, colleagues and community and play your part in creating a crash-free culture.

Road crashes

Every 6 seconds a person is killed or injured on the world’s roads. A child dies every 3 minutes. That is 3000 people, including 500 children, dying an early, often agonizing, death every day or 1.2 million deaths a year. More than 80% of deaths occur in low and middle income countries like Oman.

Worldwide, road crashes are responsible for most injury-related deaths, and rival deadly infections such as malaria and tuberculosis as a cause of early death. They are the 2nd leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 5 and 29 and the 3rd leading cause for people between 30 and 44. Exclude countries badly affected by HIV/AIDS, and you see that road crashes are today the No.1 killer of people aged between 10 and 45 (WHO/World Bank report on road traffic injury prevention 2004).

In addition to 1.2 million deaths, millions more men, women and children are maimed, paralysed or otherwise disabled for life annually. The World Report estimates that as many as 50 million people are injured or permanently disabled in crashes every year i.e. 137,000 daily or 35,000,000 since the beginning of the new millennium. The Report states that the reported toll from road crashes however is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Poor data collection and under-reporting in low and middle income countries mean that the true scale of the crisis is even greater.

The economic and social burden of this crisis threatens the hard-won gains in global health and life expectancy of past decades and is set to worsen rapidly. WHO forecasts that road crashes will jump by 60% overall from 7th place in 2004 to become the 3rd leading cause of all death and disability over all age groups by 2020. Most death and injuries will occur in low and middle income countries escalating by as much as 83% in rapidly motorizing societies while death rates in high income countries will continue to fall.

Text Box: Road deaths 2005 (per 100,000 population) UK 5.6 Global average 19 Oman 26

Oman is a low-medium income country with one of the highest reported road crash fatality rates in the world. Despite the sustained efforts of the Omani authorities, the number of road crashes in Oman has risen steadily this millennium. Since 2000, more than 5500 men, women and children have lost their lives in crashes and 70,000 have been injured, some disabled for life. This is a staggering number in a population of 2,577,000 (Ministry of National Economy population estimate).

The trend shows no signs of levelling out. Road deaths in 2008 have already outstripped the record 798 deaths in 2007. As at November 3, the toll was 799 lives lost (a 22% increase over the same period last year). Oman is already well on the way to fulfilling the World Report’s prophecy of up to 80-90% rise in death and injury from road deaths in low and middle income countries between 2005 and 2020. This situation contrasts with high-income countries where numbers are steadily falling. To put it in context, the population of the UK is 25 times that of Oman, but has only 5 times as many deaths from road traffic crashes.

In high income countries most fatalities occur among drivers. In Oman, passengers and pedestrians bear the brunt of death and injury (56% and 55% respectively in 2007). Excessive speed is involved in the vast majority of road crashes and the consequences for pedestrians and passengers are usually catastrophic.

Most fatal crashes (52%) occur Wednesday-Friday on 2-lane arterial highways passing through the busy market towns of interior Oman as weekly commuters to the capital Muscat return home to their families. Some never make it. Fatal crashes at these black spots are invariably multiple vehicle pile-ups caused by vehicles overtaking on both sides of these carriage ways. Typically these highways have:-

Speed, machismo and poor driving skills combine to cause high-impact, head-on or side-swiping collisions. With many drivers exceeding the 120 km/h speed limit, the combined kinetic force of a crash may be as much as 300 km/h, scattering bodies and wreckage far and wide. Other traffic is invariably caught up in the resultant mayhem with vehicles ricocheting into one other, often bursting into flames (see Oman crash news and archive)

Factor in the high numbers of children and young people (over-) crowded into cars for the weekend and the spiralling mortality rate should come as no surprise. Low rates of seatbelt wearing and negligible use of child restraints (see Survey) leave occupants with a minimal chance of survival. Time and time again, one driver’s thrill-seeking/stupidity results in a living nightmare of death and destruction of innocents, often his/her own family members.

Source: Al Mustadaama (Sustainability) compiled from ROP Source: UK National Statistics website

If this upward trajectory continues unchecked, within the next 5 years few families in Oman

will have been spared the pain of the sudden, violent death or disabling injury of an immediate family member. Despite this, public and private apathy prevail. We remain silent in the face of the weekly carnage apart from occasional media calls for ‘something to be done’, usually by an over-burdened under-resourced police force. For how long must we carry on believing that road crash death and injury is the price that society must pay for the right to drive and own a car?

From any viewpoint, this level of death and injury is unsustainable in a small developing society and threatens, on current trends, to undermine dramatically progress of 35 years of nation-building. Direct costs alone are conservatively estimated by WHO, to amount to 1-1.5% of GNP of countries such as Oman but are likely to be higher as shortcomings in data often disguise the full scale of road crash death and injury.

In some hospitals, traffic-related injuries represent up to 90% of all admissions and are an enormous tax on the health care system. This estimate does not in any case include the cost of prolonged medical care for the injured, disabled and often forgotten survivors or support for widows and orphans left to cope in the aftermath of the loss of the family breadwinner. The economic and social cost of road crashes is a price Oman cannot afford to pay. Allowed to continue unchecked, these costs will effectively cancel all projected gains from new tourism development. It is time for decisive action.

Solutions

All countries which have managed to reverse the rising tide of road crash casualties share a new thinking; that crashes are largely preventable, man-made problems with rational solutions which are far more cost-effective than funding medical costs and rehabilitation for victims. These solutions may involve science, but not rocket science. The World Report 2004 spells out, for the entire global community, low-cost, tried and tested measures successfully used by high income countries to reduce road crash fatalities. Oman can profit from these but, as for every country, the starting point is ‘wake-up’, ‘get a plan’ and ‘just do it’!

One of the first myths we have to kill is that road safety costs money. The means exist today to reduce significantly the costly and avoidable tragedy of road crashes. The starting point for any successful road safety strategy is a national road safety plan. This is the responsibility of government. Only governments can develop and implement policy in road safety, legislate and enforce rules and regulations, establish standards for training and testing, mount national awareness campaigns and ensure that the road network is properly planned, designed and maintained. A national road safety policy should set targets, allocate budget and define roles and responsibilities of all sectors.

• Make road safety a political priority and recognise it as a public health issue

• Create budgets for road safety and invest in effective road safety activities.

• Enact and enforce legislation compelling the wearing of seat-belts, child restraints and helmets.

• Ensure that road safety is a priority for new projects and in transport policies and plans.

• Establish data collection systems to collect and analyse data for improved safety.

• Set appropriate design standards for roads taking into account the safety of all users.

• Improve crash response, trauma care and rehabilitation for road crash victims

Any national road safety plan must target all the root causes of road crashes. These are the vehicle, the road and the road user. Worldwide, the road user is responsible for 80 to 90% or more of all crashes. Road infrastructure and vehicle failure are responsible for the rest. However, since human error can never be fully eliminated as the predominant factor in most crashes, experts now aim to design roads and vehicles to anticipate and minimize the consequences of human error.

Successful road safety plans consider the vehicle, the road and the user as one system and focus on the interactions between them. This is usefully illustrated by the Haddon Matrix, a road safety action tool developed by William Haddon 30 years ago and still widely used today. The Haddon Matrix illustrates the interactions between vehicle, road and user in 3 stages of a crash; pre-crash, crash and post-crash to identify specific actions that can be taken to minimize the consequences.

From 1997 to 2006 fatalities on Swedish roads were reduced from 541 to 431, but 2000 was a black year with 591 fatalities.

This system’s approach is the driving force behind Sweden’s bold new road safety policy, Vision Zero. Vision Zero alters the view on responsibility. Those who design the road transport system bear the ultimate responsibility for safety; road managers, vehicle manufacturers, fleet managers, politicians, public employees, legislative authorities and the police. The responsibility of the individual is to abide by laws and regulations. Before this, almost all responsibility had been placed on the individual road user.

Visions Zero is based on the realisation that vehicles, the road and users interact and are interdependent and that four basic elements under-pin safety in road traffic:

Vision Zero provides a model suitable for many countries and several have already followed the Swedish example or are in the process of implementing similar goal zero policies.

We have seen how human behaviour is the main cause of crashes. The most common risky behaviours causing 30 to 50 per cent of fatal or disabling crashes worldwide regardless of the country are failure to wear seat belts or crash helmets, excessive/inappropriate speed and driving under the influence of alcohol. In the Oman context, we can identify the most common risk factors causing road crashes or affecting severity of injury as:-

These behaviours are attributable to lack of driver experience, poor driver training and education as well as psychological factors such as thrill seeking, aggression and low self-esteem. Rapid motorisation (50,000 new vehicles per annum on the road) and congestion may aggravate the risk in Oman but is not inevitable – the UK road safety strategy has succeeded in reducing by one fifth over a 40-year period i.e. 240 casualties per 100 million vehicle kilometers in 1964 to 55 per 100 million vehicle kilometers by 2005.

Countries which have targeted one or more of the main risk factors have succeeded in reducing road crash fatalities by 20-40 per cent within a few years even when the trend was previously rising sharply.

Action for Oman

Road user behaviour may be changed through short term measures which can be introduced immediately and longer-term measures which take longer to implement and bring about change.

Reliable and comprehensive data provide a critical knowledge base on which to build support and initiate action as well as evaluating its effectiveness. Oman is unlikely to have an integrated data system before 2010. However, few would deny that Oman’s road safety situation is critical. It is sufficient to consult doctors and surgeons in major hospitals, road traffic police and paramedics who deal daily with the horrific aftermath of road crashes. Rapid action can, and should, be taken now to tackle the major risk factors regardless of the shortcomings of crash data.

Enhanced policing and uniform zero-tolerance enforcement of existing laws
Fast-track programme for comprehensive re-training and education of driving instructors.
Large-scale information campaigns on the major risk factors
Speed management through basic road infrastructure improvements, rumble strips, signs, traffic calming measures
Zero tolerance mobile phone driving ban
Priority programme of road safety education for decision makers in all stakeholder institutions.

Establish a lead agency for road safety responsible for preparing and implementing a coordinated plan of action based on Vision Zero with measurable goals and targets.
Capacity building in stakeholder institutions and enforcement agencies.
Strengthening road traffic violations enforcement capacity.
Reforming and updating road traffic laws (e.g on seat belts and child restraints)
Introducing safety features in all existing and planned road systems
Establishing an integrated system for data collection and analysis on road crash death and injury, causes and black spots
Improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists
Setting the highest international standards and specifications for imported vehicles
Raising standards of driver training and testing
Improving public transport
Formulating a long-term sustainable roads and transport policy

A ‘crash-free culture’ - what employers can do to create one

Oman is repeating the pattern experienced by rapidly motorizing high income countries in 1970s when death on the roads claimed 1 life in every 3000. The trend was reversed only when people including victims, media and public personalities began to react and to speak out against silent, passive acceptance of the carnage. In Oman, crashes already claim 1 life in 3250. Is it time for you to act?

Driving is the most dangerous activity any of us engage in daily. In Oman, 19 people have died every week from January to June in 2008, and 10 times as many injured. Most of these deaths and injuries could be prevented by careful driving. The direct costs of the growing number of crashes fall mostly on the health sector, businesses and families. Clearly, it is only governments that have the mandate to set goals, targets as part of a coherent, over-arching national strategy. However, today it is widely acknowledged that many sectors have a role to play in road safety in the prevention of crashes, deaths and injuries.

Do you urge your employees to speed up deliveries or impose unrealistic deadlines? Do you pressure them to answer their mobile phones even when on the road? It is estimated that 1 in 3 crashes involve someone who is driving for work i.e. 6 or 7 fatalities and 70 injuries every week. In this Issue of ‘One Life, Your Choice ’ we focus on your role as an employer, manager, supervisor in minimising and managing road crash risk whether your staff drive a car, delivery van, truck, motorcycle or whether you manage an entire fleet of vehicles.

The true costs of crashes to organisations are nearly always higher than just the costs of repairs and insurance claims. Many costs (lost orders and output, administrative costs, legal fees and other costs) may not be recoverable. Road accidents can also have a negative impact on staff morale and can damage the company’s image. The benefits to you, your employees and the company from managing work-related road safety can be considerable whatever the size of your business (bear in mind that the costs of crashes are proportionately heavier for a small/medium sized business than for a large business with more resources). Some of these benefits are listed below:

Despite this, road safety is the aspect of work-related safety which receives least attention from employers. Managing road crash risk is not simply a matter of ensuring that drivers hold a valid licence and that the vehicle is maintained. Health and safety principles apply to on-road activities just as to workplace activities and must be integrated into your HSE system.

Vehicle fleets including trucks, minibuses, tankers and delivery vans are proliferating worldwide and pose a particular problem. Due to size and weight alone, crashes involving these invariably mean death or serious injury to the occupants of the other vehicle. In common with other Gulf countries, in Oman the recent construction boom has seen a rise in the number of heavy, slow-moving vehicles on the roads, day and night and an upsurge in fatal crashes involving trucks and buses such as the Galfar bus crash in Oman in April 2008.

In Dubai, April alone saw at least 20 heavy vehicles overturn on the highway. As well as the fatalities, the resultant congestion caused widespread disruption to life in the Emirate. Other crashes involved trucks hitting stationary cars parked on the side of the road, including police patrol cars. The immediate causes of the crashes were speeding, reckless driving, over-loading and tyre-bursts.

According to a Traffic department spokesman, however, businesses must take the lion’s share of the blame by allowing unqualified drivers behind the wheel of heavy vehicles. Falling asleep at the wheel is a major cause of crashes for drivers compelled by employers to drive for long hours.

Research in the UK has confirmed that falling asleep at the wheel accounts for up to 20% of crashes on highways, and as many as one in ten of all crashes. In Oman, given the nature of the highway network and long distances regularly travelled by many people, the figure may be higher.

Tiredness can affect any driver, but about 40% of sleep-related crashes involve driving for work. People who drive as part of their job are at particular risk of falling asleep at the wheel since, under pressure to get from job to job, or to keep to unrealistic schedules, they are tempted to press on with a journey especially at night. The greatest risk of falling asleep at the wheel is between midnight-6am and 2-4pm.

Men aged 30 years and under are more likely to fall asleep at the wheel, and seem to be at a higher risk because they use the roads more at night. They are also more likely to press on with a journey when tired. A driver who falls asleep at the wheel is 50% more likely to die or suffer serious injury because a sleeping driver does not react before a crash. He/she also risks killing passengers and other innocent victims.

As an employer you must ensure your drivers (whether driving a company car or heavy vehicle) are not at risk of falling asleep at the wheel. It is your duty to raise awareness and make sure that as part of the recruitment and training process that your employees and line managers are aware of the risks and need for safe journey planning. Endeavour to:

When evaluating the risk of death or serious injury to your employee or other road user due to an act of your employee, you must look closely at the driver (qualification, competency, training, fitness and health), the vehicle (suitability, maintenance, loading, safety features and equipment) and the journey (planning, scheduling, time allowed, distance and weather conditions). For detailed guidance, download UK Transport department guide on driving for work below.

In the UK, recent research into the management of work-related road safety concluded that:-

The alternative scenario is that businesses continue to put profit before safety, squandering lives together with the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in a critical area with arguably the most impact on the future development of the Gulf region.

News and Events

International Transport Forum (ITF) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Published on October 14, 2008, this report is the result of a three-year co-operative effort between the ITF and the OECD in which experts review the state of the art in improving road safety performance and examine the role of targets in raising the level of ambition and achieving effective implementation of road safety policies. The work aims to assist governments in raising the performance threshold by developing more systematic approaches to road safety. Download the report summary(pdf)

In March 2008, 94 nations joined Ambassador Fuad Al-Hinai, Oman’s permanent representative to the United Nations, in co-sponsoring the fifth UN resolution on global road safety calling for the first ever global ministerial conference on road safety. The Conference will focus on the impact of road safety on the socio-economic development of countries and the attainment of Millennium Development Goals as well as reviewing the implementation of the World Report and ways to step up international cooperation.

The resolution also invited member states to participate in projects of the regional commissions to assist low- and middle-income countries in setting national and regional road traffic casualty reduction targets and encouraged private and public sector organizations with vehicle fleets to implement policies to reduce crash risk for occupants and other road users. Get more here

The third in a series of good practice ‘How to’ road safety manuals jointly produced by members of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, ‘Speed management, a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners’ aims to give the reader step-by-step guidance to implement road safety measures which have proven effective in reducing the number of deaths and injuries from road crashes. Excessive and inappropriate speed is one of the most important factors contributing to the tragic toll of road crash fatality worldwide and there is a significant reduction in road crashes - between 8% and 40% - in countries where speed limits have been lowered. This manual and the other manuals on helmets and drink driving can be downloaded from this page

A major road safety campaign under the slogan ‘Haseb – take care’ is being launched in Dubai in November as one of the fastest growing cities on the planet responds to the high level of fatal crashes that cost the Emirate a 400-600 million dirhams (US$1.3 billion) every year according to Roads and Transport Authority chairman, Mattar Al Tayer. The first phase of the campaign will focus on 7 high risk behaviours including excessive speeding, mobile phone use, fatigue, tailgating, failure to wear seatbelts, poor lane discipline and jumping red lights. This joins a raft of road safety measures such as tougher penalties introduced in new Traffic Law earlier in 2008 and the ‘Think” speeding campaign backed by 1200 new speed cameras, undercover patrol cars with mobile cameras, speed inhibitors on mini buses and new regulations governing transport of school children slated for early 2009. These measures as well as the setting up of the RTA to be a national road safety coordinating authority are based on best global practice.

'Baby Memories', a UAE campaign on child injury prevention launched mid-October

It’s official – road crashes are now the leading cause of childhood death in the UAE according to the Dubai Health Authority as it launched a new educational initiative in partnership with the RTA and Dubai Safe Kids. The Baby Memories campaign supported by Johnson and Johnson will distribute toolkits on all aspects of child health including road safety to all new mothers in Dubai’s hospitals. At the launch, Thuriya Abdulla Al Mulla of the RTA Traffic department announced a compulsory child safety seat law is also currently under consideration by the authorities.

More than 150 delegates from the Middle East and North Africa gathered in a Workshop in Doha, Qatar on 21 - 22 October, 2008 to discuss setting up a regional road safety partnership as proposed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA), Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) and Shell International. The Workshop, hosted by the Ministry of Interior of Qatar, and attended by government delegates from 14 ESCWA countries along with representatives from non-governmental organizations and more than 20 of the region’s most well-known businesses, concluded with the launch of the new Arab Mashreq Road Safety Partnership. The Partnership will act as a "center of excellence" to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and synchronize road safety efforts throughout the MENA region. A taskforce representing the different stakeholders will be formed to work on the details of the Partnership and potential projects.

Oman national 'Safety First, Insurance Next' campaign kicks off - October 2008

As the death rate continues to soar to record levels on Oman’s roads, a seminar on Safe and Defensive Driving held at the Traffic Safety Institute in Muscat on October 28, identified negligence and reckless behaviour as the root cases of most crashes. The seminar is part of a four-month long national awareness campaign spearheaded by the New India Assurance Company with support from the Royal Oman Police.

The first Gulf Youth Conference on Road Safety took place in Qatar at the end of April organized by the Ministry of the Interior and the Supreme Council for Family Affairs (SCFA). Delegates from GCC states, Iraq and Yemen along with experts, researchers, educationalists and students attended the 3-day event to raise awareness about road crashes as a major cause of death and serious injury in the GGC, their socio-economic effects and disproportionate impact on youth. The secretary general of the SCFA stressed that road safety prevention is a critical issue all sectors of society, government and non-government not just GCC traffic directorates. He called for urgent multi-sectoral dialogue and action to tackle the escalating toll of death and injury with the target of achieving a ‘Gulf Without Accidents’.

Qatar University to host 4th International Gulf Conference on Roads - November 10 – 13, 2008

The conference, organized by Qatar University, brings together practitioners and academics to share knowledge, experience and insights on the design, analysis, planning, operation and management of road transport systems. The objective is to facilitate technology and best practice transfer relevant to the development and management of transportation systems in the region. 80 technical papers and research papers will be presented and published after the conference

The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 to honour the memories of victims of road traffic crashes and their families, will this year be commemorated on Sunday November 16. In various countries across many continents candles will be lit in public spaces and private homes in honour of those killed. As the light vanishes on one continent, it will be kindled on another in an activity called "Remember and Reflect". Elsewhere "Remember and Respond", activists will work with local authorities to achieve a "day without road crashes", when concerted effort will be taken to promote the use of seat-belts and helmets; speed reduction; drink driving avoidance; and enforcement of legislation around these issues.

9th meeting of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration - Geneva, November 17-18, 2008

UNRSC set up under the stewardship of WHO following the historic 2004 UN resolution on “Improving global road safety”, unites more than 42 governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in health, transport, and safety sectors to coordinate global road safety issues. (UNRSC projects and publications can be viewed here). The upcoming meeting will provide an opportunity for updates on the activities of UNRSC collaborators, to update on and define future activities for working groups and to discuss the Ministerial Conference in Moscow above.

The first "Neck Injury Conference" in 2007 assembled about 150 experts from 22 countries and proved to be a highly effective forum for experts worldwide. Achieving reductions of neck injury risk requires enhanced cross-disciplinary cooperation between physicians, engineers, claim experts and legal specialists. The 2008 conference organized by the TÜV SÜD training Academy will cover all fields of whiplash-related accident and injury research, medical diagnostics, advanced technical protection systems, international trends in safety assessment, consumer information as well as technical / legal aspects of injury compensation and claims settlement. Get conference details here

This conference brings together experts from many fields involved in research, design and development of child safety seats and, in recent years, has developed into a worldwide platform for the exchange of expertise and best practice. This 6th onference will focus on new methods of biomechanical research, side impact test requirement, new generation of child test dummies as well as the experience of awareness campaigns around the world including Oman’s own Salim and Salimah, Safe and Sound. Get conference details here

Let us know about your road safety news/event for our forthcoming newsletter here

If you are a company interested in supporting our work and enhancing your profile among our subscribers at home and overseas, do contact us

Are you passionate about road safety and looking to make a contribution? Do you have skills especially in the visual arts and multimedia, web-design, graphic design, photography, delivering presentations or fundraising, then do not hesitate to contact us

Copyright © 2008 Al Mustadaama (Sustainability) LLC. All rights reserved. Parts of this Newsletter may be quoted provided that www.salimandsalimah.org is recognised as the source and Al Mustadaama as the copyright holder. No part may be otherwise reproduced, displayed or transmitted without prior permission from Al Mustadaama.

Newsletter, November 2008

**Welcome to our debut Newsletter One Life, Your Choice : for safer drivers, safer roads and safer cars**

Road crashes

Solutions

Action for Oman

A ‘crash-free culture’ - what employers can do to create one

News and Events