Vehicles on Doha Expressway. Picture for representation purpose only. (Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula)
As concerned departments have focused their attention on ensuring road safety and taken steps from upgrading road infrastructure to installing sophisticated traffic cameras, residents’ perception of driving in Qatar has also considerably improved, except for tailgating.
A survey says the overall “positive perception trends of driving in Qatar outweigh the negative ones” in the most recent Qatar Road Safety Monitor. “However, the perception trend for tailgating appears unchanged over the last six months (76percent),” it adds.
Currently, to ease road congestion and control accidents through smooth traffic, Ashghal’s five big road infrastructure developments projects are under way including Dukhan Highway East, Lusail Expressway, East West Corridor, Al Rayyan Road Phase 2 and Rawadat Al Khail Street. Some of them will be complete next year while others end in 2018 or 2019.
The bi-annual survey, commissioned by QIC, sets out to quantify perception trends of Qatar’s motorists about infrastructure, overall driving enjoyment, commute time, driving behaviour that are often linked to cause of accidents.
The findings of the survey are based on the views of a representative sample of the residents of Qatar over the last 6 months. According to the survey, majority of the respondents (68percent) state that road infrastructure has improved over the last 6 months, leading to shorter commute time (67percent) and more driving enjoyment (38percent).
Along other measures being taken to achieve goals of National Road Safety Strategy, the government is likely to deploy vehicle-mounted cameras to detect speeding. A pilot project is under way for the past few months on Doha’s roads.
A civilian vehicle with sophisticated speed camera is on the roads for the past few months. Sensys Gatso, a leading Swedish provider of solutions in traffic management, is behind the vehicle-mounted pilot project. The company has also installed 46 sophisticated static speed cameras in Doha. It further states that dangerous driving has reduced over the last six months from 62percent to 57percent.
There has been a marginal improvement in the trend for distracted driving (85percent), and speeding (74percent). Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) is set to equip vehicles of Traffic Department, Lekhwiya and Al Fazaa with 4G-enabled cameras to check traffic violations, address emergency cases and provide more safety to residents.
The Telecommunication Department of the MoI recently displayed the latest security programme called vehicle tracking and monitoring system. The 4G-enabled system will be able to take and send live video streams through the camera mounted on the vehicles.
This programme is the first of its kind in the GCC and is expected to be implemented early next year after successful trials. The survey further reveals that the trend for abrupt changing of lanes also seems to have dropped to 70percent as stated by the respondents of the survey.
