More to be done to reduce high road accidents

Koo Jin Shen
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

IN ORDER to bring down the Sultanate's relatively high road accident statistics, which is in the high end of the world wide average more campaigns are being looked into.

In an interview with The Brunei Times, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Communications, also the Brunei Darussalam Road Safety Council Chairman Abdul Mutalib Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Hj Mohd Yusof highlighted fatalities due to road accidents as of last year are still at the 'high end' of a world wide average.

"We are still on the high end side," he said, stating also that the global annual average is around three per 100,000 population for road fatalities. In Brunei for 2011, it was around 12 per hundred thousand population, though it has significantly reduced last year.

"The number of fatalities in 2012 has gone down from 47 (fatalities) to 26. What we want to do is to reduce this, as 26 fatalities in a population of 400,000 is quite high (around six per hundred thousand population). We are looking at good practices done in countries like Europe and Japan, who have well below the 'three' per 100,000" said Abdul Mutalib.

Awareness and Safety campaigns are being planned throughout the year, he said, "We have a few things going hopefully this year, and there will be a lot of road safety campaigns being done from time to time."

He said that there are three areas they conducting. The first is encouraging road safety awareness through religious activities. The permanent secretary said that they hope to hold bimonthly special prayers, which includes Doa Selamat and recital of relevant prayers through selected mosques.

The second is through educational activities, such as the recently held World Telecommunications and Information Society Day 2013 Drawing and Essay competition which focused on how ICT can help improve road safety.

"These help tell the children what the implications are (for road safety)," he said, noting that some 400 over children had participated. "These children will have road safety in their minds and we hope they can convey that message to their parents, who bring them to school," he said.

The third campaign they intend to do focused on infrastructure and technical areas. He said the Brunei Darussalam Road Safety Council has a number of relevant agencies involved in road safety, and they plan to look around community areas such as schools and mosques in Brunei to help enhance safety for road users including pedestrians.

Dipetik dari - The Brunei Times