Road accidents 'linked to education'

A good education would reduce the number of road accidents in Sharjah, a senior police official says.

SHARJAH // A good education would reduce the number of road accidents in the emirate, a senior police official said yesterday.

Arif al Shamsi, the police department's director general, said: "It is a prerequisite for one to be able to read and write to get a driving licence here, and I would also encourage drivers to further their education."

His comment came after statistics released by the Police Traffic and Licensing Department showed that almost half of the 802 drivers involved in accidents last year did not have an education certificate.

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One hundred and twenty had either primary school or ordinary level secondary certificates and 238 had higher secondary certificates. Only 60 had college or university degrees.

The emirate already has a long list of professions whose practitioners are barred from holding a driving licence. These include security guards, cooks, waiters, construction workers and electricians. The reason for those bans is that the jobs are poorly paid.

However, some motorists did not agree that education had a bearing on driving safety.

"The figures are a wrong assumption that the number of educated and uneducated people are equal in Sharjah," said Abdul Wahab, a resident of Al Khan area.

"If we have more than 50 per cent of residents uneducated then the number of uneducated causing accidents would also be high."