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QNANew YorkBrigadier Engineer Mohamed Abdullah Al Malki, member of the National Committee for Traffic Safety, Secretary and Head of the delegation, has reiterated Qatar’s commitment to implementing the United Nations plan for 2030, which aims to reduce the number of deaths and injuries resulting from road accidents by 50% by that date.Brigadier Al Malki pointed to the interest that was manifested in the establishment of the state’s pioneering national committee for traffic safety entrusted with the task of drawing up general traffic policies and providing solutions and proposals which improves the level of traffic safety on the country’s roads in all its engineering, technical and human fields.This came as Qatar, represented by a delegation from the National Traffic Safety Committee, participated in the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting dedicated to discuss improving the topic of road safety under the slogan Horizon 2030 for Road Safety with the participation of more than 130 countries represented by high-level delegations.The agenda of the meeting covered a number of topics, including the adoption of a concise, action-oriented and agreed political declaration submitted by the President of the United Nations General Assembly for adoption, a discussion of road safety contained in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, as well as a dialogue between relevant stakeholders to achieve results and more effective achievements, enhance the interactive dialogue on investing in road safety, and share experiences and benefit from them in addressing the remaining gaps in the process of implementing the second United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety.Brigadier Al Malki delivered a statement at the meeting on the state of traffic safety in Qatar, reviewing the country’s experience in improving road safety and the great attention it attaches to this matter and its unique experience in road safety management in the Middle East and in developing countries, where the issue of preserving the lives and property of society and the states components occupies an advanced position in its social and economic policy.The head of the delegation added that since its establishment, the committee has played an active role in improving the level of road safety through several measures that it has implemented and which made it achieve advanced results in this field, which resulted in reducing the road accident death rate per 100,000 people by 49% during the period of implementing the first work contract of the United Nations for Road Safety from 2010-2020 which coincided with the country’s implementation of its National Traffic Safety Strategy for the period from 2013 - 2022. He referred to the preparations that the National Traffic Safety Committee is currently making to launch its implementation plan for road safety at the beginning of the new year 2023, in conjunction with the second United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety for the period from 2021-2030, which aims to reduce the number Road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50% by 2030.Brigadier Al Maliki listed the most important achievements of Qatar in the field of road safety during the period of implementing its strategy, which was to reduce the response time for emergency calls to less than 5 seconds, and the response time of ambulance and rescue services to reach accident sites to 8 minutes, which contributed to saving lives of many accident victims, and thus reducing the death rate.Qatar also developed the road network and increased its length and capacity for traffic, while meeting the highest standards of road safety and establishing 258 km of lanes for bicycles and pedestrians, which led to a reduction in the number of accidents on the roads, in addition to raising the level of traffic awareness in the community through traffic awareness programmes carried out by the state in the period from 2010 to 2020, which reflected positively on the behavior of road users including drivers, passengers and pedestrians, thus reducing the rate of road accidents and the governments adoption of United Nations road safety resolutions contained in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.Brigadier General Al Maliki referred to the challenges facing countries and peoples of the world in the field of improving road safety contained in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, stressing the importance of this meeting, which opens the way for a dialogue between the relevant stakeholders, to achieve more effective results and achievements as well as strengthening the interactive dialogue on investing in road safety and exchanging experiences and benefiting from them in addressing the remaining gaps in the process of implementing the second United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety and addressing the challenges posed by road accidents, which is considered the biggest problem threatening the social and economic foundations of countries, with millions of victims die or suffer from permanent disability which causes the suffering of many families in world countries, especially in countries that suffer from weak infrastructure of road networks and their lack of safety standards needed for providing security and safety for their users.In its statement, Qatar called on countries to cooperate and work together to achieve the goals of the United Nations Second Decade of Action for Road Safety, as traffic safety represents the importance of achieving sustainable human development, in addition to establishing a secretariat to coordinate the work of civil society organizations and interested national civil bodies in road safety in order to activate its role and enable it to play an active role in efforts to improve road safety. It also suggested that the United Nations form a technical team of experts and specialists in the field of road safety to provide technical support to poor countries and help them improve the level of road safety in them, and called for an effective mechanism for exchanging information and experiences between countries in order to enhance and improve the level of road safety in all countries.
