Using mobile phones at the wheel causes 80% of accidents

Using mobile phones while driving continues to be a major cause of road accidents in Qatar, an official with the General Directorate of Traffic has said. While addressing an awareness seminar by the Ministry of Interior (MoI), Captain Mohamed Abdullah al-Kuwari, Officer at the Traffic Awareness Department, said careless driving due to mobile phone use accounts for 80% of the total accidents. “Using mobile phones and recording visuals from inside the vehicles causes distraction and ends in accidents,” he noted, urging the public to be aware of the cause. As per statistics, released by the General Directorate of Traffic earlier this year, negligence and reckless driving accounted for 2,442 accidents at a rate of 42.4% of the total cases in 2020. While 21.9% of the cases happened due to not keeping a safe distance, 12.3% were due to deviation from the road. Other reasons including red signal jumping, non-adherence to lane discipline, speeding and overtaking resulted in 13.4 % of the total cases. Qatar recorded a remarkable drop in road traffic accidents in 2020 with a sharp decrease of 28.3%. Cases went down to 155,812 in 2020 from 217,353 in 2019.Al-Kuwari said intensified awareness programmes are being held in order to address the grim scenario and achieve accident free roads. “Using or holding mobile phone or any other device in hand while driving or becoming busy watching any visual from the television set in the vehicle draws a penalty of QR500. The same penalty is applied if children below the age of 10 are allowed to occupy the front seat,” he said, adding that avoiding seat belts while driving causes a penalty of QR500. Also, al-Kuwari asked pedestrians to be careful and use only designated areas to cross the roads. “Pedestrians are given a penalty of QR200 if they fail to take necessary precautions while crossing the main road,” he said.He urged drivers to slow down at pedestrian crossings, crowded points, turns or curves or cross roads or intersections or roundabouts or bridges or underpasses or while entering school or hospital zones in order to ensure road safety. Any failure will draw a penalty of QR300.The MoI official urged motorists to move the vehicles from the roads in the case of minor accidents. Al-Kuwari also noted that drivers do not need to carry hard copies of licence and can show the copy available with the e-wallet of Metrash 2.