A survey on accidents involving pedestrians has highlighted the need for better facilities for walkers as well as proper road usage awareness among them.
The survey, whose findings were discussed at the Qatar Transport Safety Forum 2016 in Doha yesterday, revealed that a majority of road mishaps involving pedestrians took place on weekend evenings. It was conducted by the Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Centre (QTTSC) at Qatar University (QU).
Addressing the forum, QTTSC faculty member Mohamed Kharbache said data gathered over the past three years showed that 55% of pedestrian mishaps took place from Thursdays to Saturdays, generally between 6pm and 9pm.
“While Fridays accounted for 20% (of the accidents), Thursday and Saturday had figures of 16% and 19%, respectively,” said Kharbache, who prepared the report along with Dr Khalifa al-Khalifa, dean of QU’s College of Engineering and director of QTTSC.
Overall, 32% of pedestrian accidents taking place over the week occurred in the evening – between 6pm and 9pm, the study revealed.
Further, the study showed that 10% of accidents involving walkers took place on Mondays, 11% on Tuesdays, 11% on Wednesdays and 13% on Sundays, respectively. These four days collectively accounted for 45% of the total accidents in a week.
Kharbache said visits to several locations where accidents had taken place over the past three years revealed that while 77% of these sites were close to traffic signals, not a single one had a pedestrian bridge in the vicinity. He noted that pedestrians needed to walk for a minimum of 800m on an average to reach the nearest signal in order to cross a road.
The official also informed that 35% of the accident sites had pedestrian fences along the median while speed radars could be found in 39% of the locations.
Meanwhile, a study of traffic between 4.45pm and 5.45pm in front of a popular mall in West Bay found that more than 62% of pedestrians were not using the zebra crossing there. Only 251 pedestrians used the facility during this period to cross the road. Also, some 2,860 vehicles were found passing in one direction in the area over the one-hour period, the study showed.
A total of 2,233 road traffic accident deaths were recorded between 2005 and 2014, it was observed. The highest of 246 was registered in 2013, with the figure coming down to 222 in 2014. While there were 26 road fatalities per 100,000 people when the population was 1.042mn in 2006, the number declined to 10/100,000 in 2014 even as the number of residents rose to 2.235mn.
At the same time, the study found that there were 1,509 injuries in road traffic accidents in 2005 (population: 906,117), but the figure rose to 7,245 in 2014 (population: 2.235mn).  
While 95,186 road accidents were reported in 2005, the number shot up by more than 2.5 times to reach 327,239 in 2014. A total of 2.129mn road accidents were registered during the decade.
Figures of road accidents fell between 2006 (210,323) and 2007 (156,390) and also between 2009 (207,200) and 2010 (184,521). Since 2010, the number of cases has been steadily increasing, it was reported.
The average annual rate of growth in the number of vehicles between 2005 and 2014 was 16.42% while accidents increased by 14.37%. While fatalities grew at a rate of 5.61%, the annual growth in injuries from road traffic accidents was approximately 13%.
There was a nearly 130% growth in the number of vehicles in Qatar between 2005 and 2014. While there were 451,388 vehicles in 2005, the number rose to 1,037,067 in 2014.
Recently, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment announced plans to set up 15 pedestrian bridges in Doha and beyond.