Government promises to improve safety on increasingly deadly roads

When Saeed Matar heard about the 200 people killed in a year on a dangerous stretch of road near his home town of Raqqa, in Syria's eastern desert, the 47-year-old journalist decided he would inspect the road himself before writing a story that would criticise the government's failure to widen the narrow, poorly marked tarmac on which so many had died. On his way home just hours after filing his report to his newspaper, Matar's car ploughed into a tractor that had pulled suddenly onto the very same stretch of narrow road. In the pile up that ensued Matar was killed, while his wife and two children escaped with injuries. "Officials go around in powerful cars, whose curtains prevent them seeing how narrow this road is," Matar's paper, the state-run Tishreen daily, wrote in a rare editorial criticising government policy. "They treat victims of road accidents simply as statistics." In a country that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates has one of the highest rate of deaths in the region per 10,000 cars, activists and government officials say concerted action is at last being taken to improve road safety. "I feel that my brother's life was the price that was paid to make this road safer," said Abdul-Latif Matar, welcoming the government initiative to widen the road on which his elder brother lost his life three years ago. There are annually 36 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in Syria, according to the latest WHO statistics, a figure that compares with 3 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in Bahrain or just 1.5 deaths by the same measure in the United Kingdom. In 2005 road accidents in Syria killed nearly 2,200 people, a figure up from 1,653 people killed in 2004, according to official statistics from the Syrian Traffic Directorate. In Lebanon, by comparison, which saw a 20 percent increase in road deaths last year, official statistics showed 700 people had died in traffic accidents. Across the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, which includes most Arab countries, more than 130, 000 people die on the roads every year, and road traffic injuries are the second leading cause of death among children and people of working age. "The number of fatalities per vehicle in Syria is very high and the trend over the last few years is increasing," Syrian Minister of Transport Yarob Badr told IRIN. The government has implemented a number of new measures to improve safety on the roads. Of Syria's total 43,000km of road, almost the entire central network of 7,000km is now painted, said Badr, and work is being carried out to improve hard shoulders and the number of traffic signs. Also of importance is a new law passed in May that will prevent building construction near major highways, will help authorities seal many of the openings in the highway where cars make dangerous U-turns and will prevent access of locals to the highway except via designated service roads, preventing just such a crash that killed Saeed Matar. "We need to improve the quality, not the quantity of our roads," said Badr, "we have made progress but we still have a long way to go." The minister also outlined plans to increase the number of traffic police to catch speeding motorists over the summer season, when Syria's roads become crowded with Iraqi and Gulf tourists. According to the latest annual report from Ministry of Transport, the number of tourist vehicles entering the country has risen dramatically over recent years, from around 140,000 vehicles in 2000, to 230,000 in 2004. "Reports show that the majority of accidents are due to motorists driving too fast, especially at night," said Yassein Shukr, technical officer at the WHO in Syria. "Traffic accidents are now the third leading cause of death in Syria." The escalating problem has prompted the WHO to arrange a conference to be held in November with all related government departments and NGOs in Damascus to put in place a national work plan aimed at reducing deaths on Syria's roads. Educating drivers and raising safety standards at Syria's driving schools is a priority of the government and NGOs. "From the beginning of next month we will be distributing booklets on road safety in all Syrian driving schools and the ministry is now making public campaigns on road safety at all car exhibitions," said Badr. Such changes can't come quick enough for Haji al-Dikhel. The 35-year-old lost his wife Sammyah after a speeding car crashed into her as she tried to cross the busy highway beside their home in Demas, in the countryside west of Damascus. The driver of the car, whom traffic police failed to apprehend, did not stop to help the injured woman, who died hours afterward in a hospital in the capital. "Every day I take the same risks she did, trying to cross the highway to get to the other side of town without help from traffic lights, a bridge, or even a road sign to alert drivers to pedestrians," said Dikhel. "My wife died because there were no facilities to help her cross that road." HM/SZ