AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Automobile Association of Tanzania has said that the road safety projects it has implemented in collaboration with the world motorsports governing body (FIA) have been very fruitful in saving the lives.
The President of AAT Nizar Jivani, disclosed during the official opening of the Save Lives seminar to drivers at AAT headquarters in Dar es Salaam that Tanzania had the safest rally season in the continent last year and its round of the African Rally Championship (ARC) was voted among the best and safest events in Africa.
Adding Jivani said after the success of the safety projects in motorsports, FIA and AAT had to extend the training to the rest of drivers and the launched Save Lives seminar is among the non-motorsports projects being jointly implemented by FIA and AAT.
The Head of Legal Department at Traffic Police Headquarters, Superintendent of Police (SP), Deus Sokoni who was among the facilitators, said the education offered to drivers helped much in saving lives and the last year’s records show that eight accidents occurred everyday in the country from the six months of last year which he said was lower than the average of 11 accidents occurred during the same period in 2018.
The number of deaths stood at 744 during the first half of last year, which is a 25 per cent decrease. In the same period of the previous year, 994 deaths were recorded.
In general, according to ASP Sokoni, the number of road accidents in the country dropped by 27 per cent, to 1,517, between January and June 2019 compared to 2,094 accidents during the same period last year.
“Since most of accidents were caused by reckless driving, this time the seminar brought together lorry drivers from major transport and transportation companies,” said Yusuf Ghor, the Chief Executive of AAT.
The drivers in the seminar that started from August 13th to October 9th came from Transcargo, Simba Logistics, ASAS, Lake Oil, UDART, Meck One and drivers of School buses.
Adding Yusuf Ghor said the seminar will reach over 600 personalities involved in transport industries. Worldwide, an estimated 1,3 million people are killed each year on the roads worldwide and 50 million injured.
That corresponds to 3,000 fatalities every day, including 500 children: an unacceptable human, economic and social cost for our societies.
To combat this, the International Federation of Automobile created the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign which strengthened cooperation with motoring and sporting member clubs to FIA Road Safety Grant Programme.
The training to lorry drivers is part of the FIA projects further tackle this global crisis by promoting action on capacity building, safe drivers, safer vehicles and safer infrastructure.
Since 2012, the Programme has awarded over 320 innovative initiatives in Tanzania and more than 75 other countries.
