From the front page of today’s The National:
More than 3,000 children and teenagers were the victims of accidents on the streets of the capital in the past five years, police figures show, prompting renewed appeals for better protection for young people travelling in vehicles and playing on streets.
The figures reveal that 3,477 people under the age of 17 were involved in road crashes between 2004 and 2008, making the age group the second-most likely to be caught up in accidents in Abu Dhabi. The most likely to be involved were people aged 17 to 40.
The figures are horrifying, and they’ve been increasingly in the news recently as a result of the fallout from the deaths of children being dropped off by their school buses.
A few things:
- Anything above 0 traffic-related deaths is too many deaths.
- Under-17s in the UAE are involved in 15% of car-related deaths, which is much higher than the US with its corresponding 10% figure, according to the Center for Disease Control.
- Shocking imagery and infamous “mangled car” campaigns don’t seem to work particularly well, since the statistics are alarming. Two marketing professionals working in pharmaceuticals that I interviewed recently for an article both seemed agreed that was outright freaking people out about health concerns doesn’t really work.
Personally, I believe there’s a cultural dimension to these endemic driving problems, which I’ll discuss at length at some point (but not right now because I’m working on an article pitch).
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Well being from Abu Dhabi myself. The figures actually don’t shock me that much. Throughout U.A.E., we are known and despised for our reckless driving. However, I blame not only speed addicted culture, but also the Police Department and the Urban Planning Department. For the ADPD, it’s very lenient when it comes to driving. Personally, I don’t know why (although some officers acted discriminately in their treatment with other communities), but its still a widely known fact in AD. Likewise, the UPD deserves some of the blame because with their the road expansions, they didn’t forgot to build something that would allow people to safely cross the street. Now, I can’t deny they did these expansions with a good intention; to stop traffic. But its become harder for normal pedestrians to cross the road. If they fixed these problems, the roads might become safer.