By Joey Aguilar/Staff Reporter

There is a need to focus on selecting the most suitable routes for heavy vehicles, especially heavy trucks transporting gas and hazardous materials, a road safety scientist has suggested.

“We cannot just assign a vehicle to transport gas, for example, through a highway where there is high density of traffic, it is very dangerous,” the Qatar Road Safety Studies Centre (QRSSC) senior scientist Dr Mohamed Kharbeche said.

He was speaking at the National Workshop on Effective Actions on Accident Prevention to Mitigate Number of Qatar Road Accidents held at the Traffic Department Office on Wednesday.

The QRSSC, established by Qatar University’s College of Engineering in September 2012, has the central mission to create and disseminate knowledge related to road safety and accident prevention by conducting studies, research, analysis and evaluation of road accidents.

Some of its research activities include safe transport of hazardous materials in Qatar, prediction of road accidents in Qatar 2022, and evaluation of ‘Traffic Calming Devices’ in Qatar.

“The QRSSC has a current project which deals with optimising the routes for Woqod which transports gas and diesel to different areas in the country,” he said.

Citing the increasing number of vehicles and growing population, Dr Kharbeche underscored the importance of “studying in detail” road users’ behaviour, including drivers and pedestrians. “We need to do a sophisticated study regarding driving behaviour.”

The average growth rate of vehicles in Qatar is 16%, he pointed out. From 131,475 vehicles in 1996, the number had increased to 1,037,067 in 2014. A big portion are private cars (62%) followed by private transport (26%). The rest are heavy equipment, trailer, taxis, motorcycles, public transport, and others. Qatar’s population is also increasing with an average growth rate of 8% annually: around 2.34mn this year.

The QRSSC official noted that another factor on road safety and accidents also include the population diversity in the country. Qatar hosts more than 100 nationalities from different countries who speak different languages.

A large proportion of the population have difficulty in reading Arabic or English and have a limited experience with Qatar roads and its environment. They also learned to drive in different road or regulatory environment such as left-hand or right-hand drive. Many of them also have different attitudes to the police and other authorities.

“Another factor is the age. The number of accidents is very high for ages between 20 and 34 and it is due to many reasons: the first one is high risk driving or aggressive driving or because of their culture,” he added.