Unusual ways to make roads safer

Los Angeles is using an artist in residence to reduce road deaths. Should the UAE follow?

A multifaceted approach will make UAE roads safer, but can art play a part in this? Courtesy Dubai Police

Reducing the rate of deaths and serious injuries on our roads is a daunting challenge that will require both conventional and unorthodox methods. Although the death toll has been steadily decreasing, for this to continue will require a wide range of initiatives including continuing existing strategies such as greater enforcement of the rules about speeding and tailgating, better driver education, improved road engineering and analysing the factors that caused serious accidents.

But we will need to do more than simply apply these existing strategies more vigorously. Instead, those involved in road safety also need to look globally to see what other solutions introduced overseas might be applied here. One example of this is from California, where Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has announced the Creative Catalyst Artist in Residence Programme to work with the Department of Transport on the ambitious Vision Zero initiative, which has the goal of eliminating all traffic fatalities by 2025.

Exactly how the artist will help avert the average of 100 pedestrian and cyclist deaths on Los Angeles roads each year remains to be seen. Department of Transport general manager Seleta Reynolds has deliberately left the brief vague, telling reporters that they “don’t want to constrain where that goes” by getting too specific about what might be produced.

Two years ago, Dubai announced a similarly ambitious goal of zero road deaths by 2020 and has been pursuing that through both traditional and unorthodox methods. While increasing traffic patrols in known accident-prone areas, installing more speed cameras and upgrading them to detect tailgaters, it has also introduced the We Are All Police app. This allows ordinary motorists who see bad driving to alert the police control centre.

As The National’s Road to Safety campaign has shown over the past six years, the road toll will only keep dropping through finding better ways to lessen the chance of accidents. We ought to look globally to gather the ideas that might work here.