Dubai: Towing vehicles will be stationed at various places across Dubai to quickly clear cars involved in accidents from roads and to keep the traffic moving, said a senior official.
The moves comes as part of the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority's (RTA) plan to minimise time taken to handle accidents. The RTA studies have shown that the sudden breakdown of a vehicle or a minor accident that actually needs only five minutes to clear the vehicle from the spot currently needs at least 40 minutes to remove the vehicle and resume normal traffic movement.
Staff of the private companies in coordination with the RTA officials will attend to the non-injury accidents. Police will be called in only for serious accidents.
Implementation strategy
However, an RTA official said the plan has not yet been approved because the RTA is currently working on its implementation strategies.
As per the initial plan, the private operators will have their staff with towing vehicles stationed at various locations in the city so that they can reach the accident site quickly.
The official, however, did not give details about the timeframe for implementation of this new system.
The RTA currently employs at least four motorcycles to tow away cars involved in accidents. An RTA official had said that one of the major causes of traffic jams was the delay in handling accidents.
Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA, earlier said the RTA would introduce the system with the cooperation of police to attend to traffic accidents as fast as possible to avoid long tailbacks on roads.
According to the RTA studies, 243,386 accidents were recorded on Dubai roads last year. It means 666.8 accidents per day and 27.7 accidents per hour.
Out of the total accidents, more than 2,000 were dangerous, involving injuries or deaths. This means that one accident creates a traffic jam almost every two minutes in Dubai. Traffic jams caused an estimated loss of Dh4.5 billion annually to the economy, while the cost of accidents stood at around Dh400 million.
Motorists weclomed the move. "Similar steps should be taken in other emirates as well because it takes much longer time for police to attend to accidents, especially minor ones. As a result, motorists face delays due to traffic congestion," said Farqan Ali, a taxi driver.
5m vehicular trips a day in Dubai
The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) studies show that the number of vehicular trips in Dubai has increased to five million per day and is expected to rise to 20 million by 2020.
The number of registered vehicles in Dubai has already increased to 780,000 this year and is set to cross the 800,000 mark by the end of this year.
