Doha - Mounting road accidents in Qatar has prompted the Al Khor community to float a club with a difference. With the active support of Qatargas, it has launched a club for promoting safe driving on Qatar roads.
The club, the first of its kind in Qatar, will have its exclusive focus on improving the overall safety of roads and will motivate people to turn Qatar into an 'accident-free country'. Named as STEER (Safe Traffic Ethics on Every Road), the club will offer friendly service to vehicle users all over Qatar.
Launched in June, STEER is a non-profit and non-partisan organisation that works to improve life in Al Khor and all over Qatar. Its basic idea is to spread the message of safe driving across Qatar and promote good driving habits. It will mobilise drivers and all vehicle users to achieve the goal of making Qatar an 'accident-free country..
"Despite a close monitoring on drivers, rash driving and the subsequent road mishaps are increasing in Qatar.
Every year hundreds of people are directly or indirectly becoming victims of gruesome accidents. We hope STEER could do something to save at least some of these precious lives", said its Team leader Krishna Kumar.
The maximum permissible speed on Qatar highways is 120 kmphr. But one could see people flying on the roads leading to tragic mishaps. Speeding vehicles will have less time to notice and react to other vehicles on road. They forget the basic lesson of driving, that small increases in vehicle speed can greatly increase the chances of road accidents.
A recent report on Qatar's Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) released by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) says 71 per cent of traffic accidents were caused by careless driving. The majority of victims (53 per cent) were in the age group of 10-40, the most productive class in Society. Forty three per cent of the total drivers who died due to RTA were in the age group of 10-19, which indicates that majority of them were unlicensed drivers, he said.
The STEER club, which had its soft-launch in June last, has been getting a tremendous response from public.
When the club was launched formally on Sunday, its total membership crossed 1500.
"Our mission is to motivate maximum number of vehicle users to enroll themselves as the members of the club. Anyone with a valid Qatari license can join the club. Members will benefit from periodic raffle draws that include great prizes like TVs, mobile phones and even a car.", Krishna Kumar said.
© The Peninsula 2006
