BEWARE OF CARS!

67 dead and 183 injured - such are the horrifying traffic accident statistics registered by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs in just 3 weeks in November.  In 9 months of 2009, 1975 traffic accidents were registered in Azerbaijan, resulting in the deaths of 642 people, with 2104 injured.  In Baku, there were 826 traffic accidents in the same period.  The Main Traffic Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that traffic accidents are mainly due to gross and thoughtless violations of traffic rules - failure to observe speed limits, drunk driving and driving in the opposite lane.  These are just statistics and terrible truths.  Behind every number, there is death or irreversible damage to health.  Someone has lost a loved one - father, mother, wife, husband, brother, sister, child...  Globally, about 1.3 million people die and 50 million people are injured and disabled in traffic accidents every year.  According to the World Health Organization, traffic accidents are the most significant cause of death of young people aged 10 to 24.

Problems of international importance

How can the number of traffic accidents and road deaths be reduced?  How can safe driving habits be introduced?  This is what one was bound to think on the day that the driver of a Prado SUV, who was drunk to say the least, drove into four members of the same family, including a 2-year-old child, right on the pavement as they walked out of a restaurant - they were leaving a wedding party, but were doomed never to reach home.  And that was not all.  Three more vehicles collided because of the Prado driver - emergency trucks pulled them out flattened like old food cans.  As people dispersed, a horrible scene could be seen - pieces of glass from lights and windshields, pieces of metal  from the crashed vehicles, pools of oil on the tarmac mixed with blood, and a woman's shoe nearby - utter waste...  This is not easy to forget.  And this was not the only car accident in which people have been killed without stepping off the pavement.

Why does this happen?  Because some drivers forget that the need to observe elementary traffic rules.  There are often inexperienced drivers at the wheel who began to drive around the city as soon as they were given their driving licences, which does not, however, make them good drivers.  It is even worse if the young driver has effectively not passed a driving test at all.  It is no secret that getting a licence "through connections" is not unusual, as in many other countries of the former USSR.  And these "motorists" are on the roads; formally they have every right to drive a car but in fact they cannot tell a road sign from a signpost, not to mention markings on the road, which they think are some kind of tarmac design.  This is aggravated by a blatant lack of culture and conceit - "I can do whatever I want in my car."  The drivers of buses and minibuses - public transport - behave even more outrageously.  Very high speeds, sloppy driving despite the size of the vehicle, absence of any respect for passengers.  Bus drivers often challenge one another to a race and, as a result, the recent incident - a collision between two buses on Mirali Qasqay Street - in which nine people were seriously injured.

Pedestrians are a different matter, and some of them are clearly overconfident.  And there is a unique category of pedestrians who literally run to cross the road wherever they like, apparently in a rush to see the next life - they do not know what a zebra crossing or underground crossing is, and using a bridge seems to be against their principles.  In addition, they cross the road alone - not in groups, as is the rule in all civilized countries - wherever they please and regardless of the colour of the traffic light.  But drivers too, it has to be noted, pay no attention to pedestrian crossings.  As a result, the driver cannot predict in all this chaos what the pedestrian will do next, and the pedestrian has no time to get an insight into the particular driver's psychology, which results in yet another accident and, often, in death.  For example, in November, a Volga car driver went at full-speed into a bus stop on Nobel Avenue and hit three pedestrians at once, including one woman who died on the spot.

A World Day of Remem-brance for Road Traffic Victims was commemorated recently.  In October 2005, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution urging governments to commemorate this day on the third Sunday of November.  It was established to commemorate the victims of traffic accidents and convey condolences to their relatives who suffer the emotional and practical consequences of these tragic events.  The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims was introduced to appeal to the governments and nongovernmental organizations of the world and to draw public attention to traffic accidents, their consequences and their cost, and to take measures to prevent them.  And on 18 November, on a Russian initiative, the first Global Ministerial Conference for road safety was organized in Moscow with the participation of representatives from 150 countries.  It was noted during the forum that road safety has long ceased to be a domestic problem of individual states and it was high time to coordinate work.

Not the worst, but difficult...

150 participating countries are enough to make it clear:  road safety is a global problem.  Speeding, drunk driving:  tens of causes - millions of lives.  The truth is that if the international community does not focus on the problem of road safety over the next 15 years, 75 million people will suffer from traffic accidents on the planet one way or another.  For Azerbaijan, the situation on the roads is one of the most pressing issues.  Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed, on 1 February 2006, a directive on the improvement of the Baku transport system and bridges, pedestrian crossings and new roads have been built in the capital since then.  The main provisions of the directive were to make roads secure and introduce stricter fines for drivers who break traffic rules, Arastun Macidov, head of the State Traffic Police Main Department press service, told R+.  "Let me stress that the most important factor in road safety and the elimination of traffic jams is drivers' discipline.  Together with problems of infrastructure, the main sources of jams are drivers who break the rules."  A. Macidov said that, despite the fact that drivers often break the traffic rules, the road situation in Azerbaijan is no worse than in other countries.  However, it remains difficult to persuade Azerbaijani drivers to use seat belts because many people think that they are useless.  At the same time, the law clearly states that they should buckle up before the vehicles starts moving.  Furthermore, the driver should not only fasten his seat belt, but also make certain that all passengers do the same.  As for crossings, the Traffic Police spokesman admitted that not all pedestrians cross the road where they should.  But, on the other hand, if the pedestrian steps on a zebra crossing, the driver must let him pass.  However, if the pedestrian is not certain that he has enough time to cross the road, he should go back.  "In addition, drivers never let a pedestrian or a cyclist pass when they turn left or right on the road.  All this means that many motorists have no respect for pedestrians, who are essentially the most vulnerable participants in road traffic," Macidov said.

At the same time, the State Traffic Police Main Department continues to implement projects to tighten monitoring of the observance of traffic rules.  Among the measures to be taken is the introduction of the latest technology - the installation of CCTV cameras and surveillance monitors on the roads, introduction of single centralized control systems in areas of heavy traffic and the installation of photographic radar and radar guns.  The objective is to punish those drivers who break the rules, making them administratively accountable and ensuring smooth traffic.  At present, more than 40 cameras and detectors work in Baku.  They are controlled by operators from the central monitoring centre.  For example, if the operator detects that traffic intensity on a street crossing Neftcilar Avenue is low, he can change the timings of the street lights on the avenue:  the green light will remain on for 55 seconds instead of 45.  As for the detectors, they count the number of vehicles passing, which enables the Traffic Police to collect statistics about road traffic at different times of the day and adjust lights accordingly.

In addition, to prevent traffic accidents and increase the effectiveness of measures to improve discipline, various monthly events are organized, both for drivers and for pedestrians.  And from 17 to 23 November, Traffic Police officers organized a safety week, during which they began to enforce punishments for pedestrians who broke the rules.  The officers explained the rules to pedestrians, showed them video clips about the consequences of traffic accidents - injuries and deaths - and fined them, of course.  A minibus equipped with a monitor moved through every district of Baku.  These minibuses carried 20 minutes of public awareness video materials and leaflets with excerpts from the traffic rules.  "We invited everyone who broke the rules onto these buses and showed them the video materials."

The UN's view...

In Russia the situation on the roads is so critical that a national strategy of road traffic safety was approved for the country.  The Russian authorities intend to reduce the number of casualties by 33% in 2012, compared to 2007. In late August, after a series of big traffic accidents, the president of Russia himself had to intervene, so he convened a special meeting.  Among the concrete decisions taken was the development of road safety technological standards - the quality of roads must not lead to traffic accidents.  In addition, Dmitriy Medvedev said that, in his opinion, drivers must be able to provide pre-hospital care.  Yet another decision was to introduce the State Traffic Inspectorate confidential phone line, which drivers will be able to use to report all illegitimate actions by traffic police officers or any other facts posing a threat to road safety.  Incidentally, Aydin Quliyev, head of the Road Safety public association for public awareness, said that all these measures should be put to use in Azerbaijan too.  In his opinion, the road safety situation in Azerbaijan is also quite difficult.  

The United Nations has proposed to declare the next 10 years a decade of action on road safety.  However, victory in the fight for safety depends on car manufacturers too - they must continue to introduce new technology - and from the law enforcement bodies of different countries.  It is necessary to have norms in national laws which issue clear signals to drivers in all countries.  For example, a driver whose licence is suspended in one country must not be able to drive in another - at least not without some special retraining, argue United Nations officials.  One important nuance is the latest technology in health care.  The emergency van which was shown to participants in the World Ministerial Conference for road safety in Moscow, for example, was intended mainly for the resuscitation of children.  The van, types of which have been used in some countries for many years now, is equipped not only with the latest medical equipment, but also with a satellite communications system.  From the scene of the accident, the medics can contact the major clinics.  Advice from leading specialists and the instantaneous processing of data on the victim's state of health can be crucial to the outcome.  There are only a handful of these advanced emergency vehicles in Russia.  There are none in Azerbaijan.