Facts About The Gulf

About Gulf

Gulf region concluding almost rich countries is located in Middle East. There they have little crime and standard of living. They are: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman & Bahrain. In 40 years since gaining independence from colonial states, the resource rich region saw huge improvements in education, infrastructure and standard of living. All the countries in Middle east are ruled by monarchy providing politically stable environment for the businesses to boom in the volatile region. Domestic crimes are low compared to Western countries and standard of living is on par with the Western world.

 

Roads of death

The region has seen huge population boom with many opportunities created due to expanding economy. Majority of the population are expatriates in most of the Gulf states with nationals being the minority. The unnatural deaths have been increasing in the region proportionally to the increase of population. What is actually killing around 45 people everyday in population of 36.5 million in the region?. Natural Disasters? Heart Attack? Cancer? The answer is deaths due to Road Traffic accidents (RTA). According to Robert Marks, a senior official of International Safety Council, the region has second most dangerous roads in the world.

 

Road Death statistics

Almost all the countries in the region have high number of deaths due to accidents. According to report released on 2009, Saudi Arabia alone has 19 deaths everyday due to road accidents The financial cost of accidents is three times as much of the combined expenditure of education and health sectors in the kingdom. The financial loss caused by traffic accidents exceeds $ 5.3 billion annually that is enough budget to fund education and health in at least 10 developing countries.

 

According to report released by WHO, a driver is 7 times more likely to die due to road accident in UAE compared to UK. This statistics shows the gravity of the situation which is worsening every year.

 

Government solutions

Most of the government in Gulf States are aware of the problem and are heavily concentrating on penalizing measures like installing speed cameras, imposing fines on violators, fines if car does not conform to the rules etc. Very low budget is set for any preventive measures like spreading road safety awareness, educating drivers etc. Most of the present road safety campaigns are toothless and nothing much is done to know the effectiveness of the campaigns. According to Silvio Saadi, a Jeddah-based businessman and film producer “We get approached every year by government departments to produce public service announcements about speeding but most of the time nothing comes of it”.

 

Suraya Foundation

Penalizing measures has limitations and it would be impossible for the police to stop every violator on the road. Preventive measures which aims to change attitude of the drivers and help adopt safe driving principles is required to ensure long term safety of the drivers. Suraya Foundation was formed on May 2010 to achieve this aim i.e to spread road safety awareness among the drivers in the region through media helping change attitudes of the reckless drivers. The foundation uses principles of “sticky” messages written by two Harvard researchers – Dan & Chip Heath in their famous book “Made to Stick”. The campaign would be spread through mass media – newspapers and radio to have maximum effect. To measure the efficacy of the campaign, a survey would be held in the end asking the listeners if the messages did change the attitudes.

 

Taking preventive measures is always cheaper and best compared to penalizing measures taken by most Gulf governments. Most of the residents in Gulf are not aware that many accidents are caused due to carelessness and the seriousness of loss caused by road traffic accidents. It is very important to educate people of the dangers of reckless driving and thus prevent accidents by making the drivers adopt safety driving principles and put a check on the epidemic.