Qatar to boost pedestrian safety by installing hundreds of new crossings

In a bid to improve the safety of pedestrians in Qatar, 267 new crossings, paths and overpasses are set to be built in the coming years, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) announced yesterday.

With Qatar’s booming population and an average of 8,000 new cars joining the roads each month, improving road safety for drivers and pedestrians is becoming a critical issue.

More specifically, a lack of crosswalks is one of the key challenges to road safety as previously highlighted in Qatar’s National Road Safety Strategy. The report notes:

“Roads do not always have facilities for pedestrians to help them use the roads safely. Due to the high levels of construction, pedestrians often find that the facilities they are using are interrupted by construction sites. Parallel parking is provided on some divided urban roads, meaning that pedestrians have to interact with relatively high speed traffic.”

Plans for pedestrian-friendly infrastructure also come on the heels of newly released data regarding the number of pedestrian deaths on Qatar’s roads.

According to officials quoted by the Qatar Tribune, some 101 people were killed in pedestrian-related traffic accidents from 2012 to 2013, while 300 were treated in the hospital for injuries related to road incidents.

Hospital officials have previously said that about 80 pedestrians in Qatar are killed and 200 injured each year in crashes.

Pedestrian safety

About a third of all Qatar’s road fatalities involve pedestrians, according to Sidique Dali, a representative of the MOI Traffic Department’s road engineering section, who spoke at a seminar about the issue yesterday.

The majority of those pedestrians killed are from South Asian countries, particularly Nepal and India, which had 15 and 8 such deaths respectively during 2013, Dali said.

One of the main issues continues to be poor roadside lighting, particularly in the Industrial Area, where nearly a fifth (19 percent) of these pedestrian deaths happened.

Some 60 percent of pedestrians are killed in evenings (after 6pm), which is why officials advise people out walking after dark to wear lighter-colored clothing to help them be seen.

Additionally, according to Qatar University’s Dr. Mohammed Kerbash, the majority of deaths occur when people try to cross roads at non-designated crossings.

However, there are very few official pedestrian crossings in Qatar and this, combined with a lack of pedestrian awareness among many drivers, is another key problem, he said.

New crossings

Dali said that the MoI was trying to tackle this issue by installing crossing points at more than 250 locations across Qatar.

This would include 18 one-way and 113 all-direction crossings, as well as a number of pedestrian bridges, some of which would be air-conditioned.

The construction of pedestrian overpasses has already been earmarked by public works authority Ashghal as one of a number of improvements it plans to make to Qatar’s roads in a QR600 million package of works to boost street safety.

In April this year, Ashghal issued a pre-qualification notice seeking contractors with the “right vision, and the necessary experience, capabilities, understanding and commitment” to submit bids to tender for work to build an unspecified number of brides and overpasses across Doha.

These flyovers should be of a design that “reflects the local area” and would be concentrated in areas where lots of people walk, including schools, shopping centers and public transport interchanges.

No timeline has yet been specified for the construction of the pedestrian walkways.

Injuries

Photo for illustrative purposes only.
Photo for illustrative purposes only.

Dr. Rafael Consunji, Director of Hamad Medical Corporation’s Injury Prevention Program, said that on average HMC receives 300 people a year who are the victims of pedestrian road accidents.

“What is sad is that with all the advanced equipment and trained staff, 71 percent of them die on the spot,” Consunji added.

One of the key factors behind this is the high speeds of many drivers in Qatar. At speeds of 76 km/h, there is a 90 percent chance of a driver killing a pedestrian he hits, Consunji is quoted as saying in the Peninsula.

Earlier this year, the MoI published a number of tips to try to improve the safety of pedestrians when out and about on the streets.

The advice included to avoid walking too close to roads and not to run across intersections.

Road safety

There are also a number of road safety campaigns ongoing in Qatar targeted at motorists, including urging people not to use their mobile phone while driving, and trying to stop the dangerous but frequent practice of tailgating.

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