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Every year, 1.3 million people are killed and up to 50 million injured in road traffic accidents worldwide. The numbers are even more staggering in the Arab world, where at least 500,000 traffic accidents result in 36,000 deaths and 400,000 injuries yearly.
In an effort to promote safe driving among commuters, Shell in partnership with Emirates Driving School invited drivers from Al Ghazal Transport, one of the emirates largest transport companies, to participate in a day-long road safety session.
Dr. John Barry, Shell’s Abu Dhabi Chairman led the discussion explaining to the teams Shell’s measures of road safety, “Shell staff and contractors drive more than 1.1 billion kilometres each year, enough to go 75 times around the globe every day” he said, “safe driving is a priority for us, and is reflected in the number of road safety initiatives we host worldwide.”
Mr. Craig Sherrin, Emirates Driving Company’s new CEO highlighted that “EDC will be proud to be a hub for safety days and to support Road Safety initiative for our partners (we have partnered with Shell and Emirates Foundation for youth development from 2008 on Salama Road Safety Initiatives). This will increase EDC’s capacity to target the level of human factor which is a major contributor to the road safety” also he added that “it is part of our leading role to provide driving education contributing to safer roads for the community”
Dino Kalivas, Director of Business Development, states “Emirates Driving Company is excited to implement new systems for driver assessment during simulation and EDC is also introducing for the first time in Middle East a hazard perception test for new curriculums (bus, heavy vehicle, motorcycle and light vehicles)”.
Members of Al Ghazal transport were given a chance to test their safe driving skills on state of the art driving simulators – which replicated real world driving scenarios, and displayed the life-saving benefits of wearing seatbelts during mock accidents.
In 2009, Shell launched the 12 mandatory Life-Saving Rules as a way to increase the focus on critical safety risks within the company. The rules prescribe what employees and contractors must know and do to prevent serious injury or fatality, for example: wearing seat belts and not speeding or using mobile phones – even hands-free – while driving. If rules are broken, employees face disciplinary action up to termination of employment, while contractors can be removed from the site and barred from future work with Shell.
In Shell, Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) is imbedded in the company’s business principles to ensure having a strong safety culture, with extra focus on managing the most critical risks, such as road safety. In this important area, Shell was one of the founders of the Middle East and North Africa Road Safety Partnership, an organization dedicated to initiating programmes and awareness campaigns to help reduce the number of fatalities across roads in the region.
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