Feel safer on the roads

Feel safer on the roads

According to official figures, the number of road deaths in the UAE declined sharply in 2009.

January 6, 2010 3:47 by Aarti Nagraj

And the UAE has also been reaching out to young people; a paper presented by students of Zayed University at the 2009 World Congress on Public Health found that the rate of traffic accidents was particularly high among younger drivers.

Efforts to combat this have included the Fashionable Seatbelt Campaign, launched by the Salama Road Safety Public Awareness Initiative, which attempted to convince young people to wear seatbelts by providing them with branded belts.

“Young people like fashion in general,” Maytha al-Habsi, the head of the initiative told The National. “Many people would love a Gucci seat belt, for example. Or a seat belt that carries the name of their preferred football team. Also, Emiratis like so much to carry their national flag.”

And the Initiative didn’t stop there; it also launched a campaign focusing on the “guilt factor.” Targeting young people, the campaign illustrated the emotional distress their families would endure if the youngsters were killed on the road.

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Tags: 2009, accidents, decreased, measures, traffic, UAE