In its continuous efforts to reduce rate of road accidents, Saudi Arabia has taken part in the recently concluded international forum titled “Role of Community Institutes and Committees in Road Safety,” held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, last week. The international gathering offered a chance to the participants to benefit from varying views on ways to control accidents. The participants discussed several issues and came up with a package of recommendations to reduce traffic accidents. Ehad Al-Samanoudi, head of the Saudi Community Project for Safety on Roads, represented the Kingdom in the two-day international meeting along with Dr. Intisar Felemban, head of Women and Family Affairs Committee in the Arab Road Safety Organization. Samanoudi pointed out that the gathering was rich in terms of the topics it discussed. “The meeting emphasized the need to focus on scientific research through making it among the priorities of all strategic actions of traffic safety plans,” he said. Samanoudi added that the meeting also recommended that universities have important role to play in reducing road accidents through adding safety programs in their curricula. They can also support scientific researches in the fields of road engineering, drivers' behaviors and all law, social and psychological road-safety related issues, he added. Dr. Felemban told Saudi Gazette that the meeting suggested to hand over a proposal to the Secretariat General of the Arab Council of Interior Ministers and to the Arab Organization for Traffic Safety to create an observatory Arab database center where traffic issues could be analyzed.
