A new survey conducted by a car company in the Middle East has yielded alarming results, with almost 50% of the parents who responded to the survey admitting to having broken road safety rules when they thought that they could get away with it.
44% of the surveyed parents in the region confessed to illegal on-road behaviour, with 18% admitting that they were more likely to ignore rules when there are no surveillance cameras.
16% admitted to driving in a dangerous manner when they were not being monitored, and 10% confessed to doing so when there was no sign of a police presence on the roads.
43% of all those responding to the survey admitted that when they were in a rush, they were more likely to break the rules, and 40% confessed to having checked social media sites or made phone calls even when children were in the car with them.
The study was conducted by YouGov as part of Infiniti Middle East’s ‘Eyes on You’ road safety awareness campaign to highlight the road behaviour of parents.
A total of 1,869 parents across the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia were involved in the survey.
The road safety campaign is intended to get families to make safe driving habits a priority, particularly when children are involved, says Infiniti Middle East’s managing director Markus Leithe.
The results of the survey serve as a reminder to all parents in the region that their poor behaviour on the roads is noticed and will eventually end up being copied by their children, Leithe points out.
The campaign is associated with the traffic safety strategy in Dubai in order to try to cut down on road fatalities by as much as 1.5 per 100,000 people within the next two years.
According to Leithe, the strategy is based around four agendas: improving the driving habits of motorists, traffic awareness campaigns, inspecting the records of motorists, and inspecting motor vehicles for criminal safety procedures and traffic safety regulations.
The Dubai Road and Transport Authority’s traffic awareness senior manager Deema Hussein says that the traffic awareness campaigns run by its schools also educate children and teenagers, given that they will be future drivers and road users.
The Road and Transport Authority has created a variety of initiatives, plans and projects over the years to try to raise awareness of the need for a positive traffic safety culture and to improve traffic safety in Dubai, Hussein adds.
Even if you are a very safe driver, anyone who drives a motor vehicle in the UAE is under a legal obligation to have taken out at least a basic form of car insurance in the region.
Car insurance ensures financial protection in the event that an accident takes place on the road that damages your vehicle or any vehicles belonging to other road users.
Car insurance also protects drivers in the event of car theft and other associated issues.