Maersk Oil Qatar and Vodafone Qatar have come together to help address one of Qatar’s most pressing challenges – road safety.
Hundreds of students at Park House English School in Doha have benefited from a weeklong road safety event, featuring one-to-one coaching and a state-of-the-art road safety simulator, which sought to highlight positive road behaviour among young people.
Road accidents are fast becoming a global epidemic, according to the United Nations, with 1.3mn people losing their lives and 50mn seriously injured each year on roads.
The road safety event at Park House English School drew on Maersk Oil Qatar’s and the General Directorate of Traffic’s successful Students for Road Safety programme, which seeks to transform young people into ambassadors for safe road behaviour.
Students were given one-to-one coaching in the Students for Road Safety simulator that uses an artificial intelligence engine to recreate common mistakes made by drivers in Doha, such as tailgating, failure to indicate, flashing lights and cutting across lanes at roundabouts.
Sheikh Faisal bin Fahad al-Thani, deputy managing director, Maersk Oil Qatar, said: “The visit to Park House English School is a fantastic example that by working together in an efficient way, we can help make a meaningful difference to the lives of people in Qatar.”
During the event, Vodafone Qatar outlined practical steps that students can take to improve road safety with iPads featuring an educational road safety app that outlined a set of “absolute road rules”.
Kyle Whitehill, CEO, Vodafone Qatar, said: “We’re very pleased to partner with Maersk Oil in tackling road safety awareness because this issue requires a contribution from everyone. Road safety is a topic that is strongly embedded in our workplace culture, where Vodafone staff across the world live by seven absolute health and safety rules, including in their driving behaviour. By working together and bringing the best resources to support the campaign, we can all do our part to encourage future drivers to become road safety ambassadors and make Qatar’s roads safer.”
Students for Road Safety is a collaborative effort between Maersk Oil and the Traffic Department, under the One Second! national road safety umbrella. It seeks to instil a responsible mindset among Qatar’s youth to develop a positive road safety culture.
Park House English School students using the simulator.
