BEIRUT: Ziyad Samen was a popular young man who never said no to anything. One day he decided to go to the Faraya ski resort with friend Carl Bardawil for a night out on the town. It was to be their last. As the young friends made their way home at 4 a.m, Samen’s car ran into trouble at a cross-road. Instead of following the road’s curve, the car “decided to take them down the cliff,” Samen’s friend Eli Obeid wrote in a letter posted to the website of road safety organization KunHadi.
Samen and Bardawil were found dead the next morning, their bodies badly charred in the burnt-out car.
Their deaths have left Obeid with several unanswered questions: “What if? What if we were there? What if the roads were safer? … What if I said yes at one in the morning to Ziyad’s last phone call and I was the one in the car with him?”
Speed and reckless driving are big killers, but Lebanon’s poorly outlined, pock-marked roads, and lack of road-safety signals also share responsibility for the high numbers who die by the road-side.
The numbers are depressingly high: on average, there are over 10,000 injuries and 500 fatalities every year. Some 354 people were injured and 35 died in car crashes this September alone, according to the Internal Security Forces.
“Car accidents are the number one cause of death among young people, and nobody is doing anything,” complained Fadi Gebran of KunHadi. Gebran lost his own son, Hadi, in a car accident three years ago.
The need for increased traffic safety awareness and infrastructure in Lebanon was highlighted Thursday, at a seminar held by 3M – the company better known for creating the “Post-it” note. Officials said clear, visible and well-located road signs were cost-effective tools in preventing casualties.
“Reflective markings on heavy vehicles are now top of the agenda for all countries,” 3M Regulatory Affairs Manager Rik Nuyttens said.
Countries where these markings have been made mandatory, such as South Africa or the US, have seen accidents decrease by up to 40 percent, he said. Reflective markings are not in wide use in Lebanon, where road signs themselves are few and far between.
“We’re using painted signs in Lebanon, not the reflective signs,” Gebran said.
KunHadi, in collaboration with Rotaract Lebanon, is currently installing 3M reflective lights along the Hazmieh-Achrafieh highway to put the technology to the test.
Reflectors are being added to all street-light posts and on the posts of all traffic islands to clearly show drivers which direction they can turn, Gebran said.
They are also demarcating the road with reflective material, he said: “The lines are the most important [in indicating the] limits of the road and signs – the driver has to know what to do and where to go.”
But even if these hi-tech reflective road signs are installed, activists say there will still be a need for sustained traffic-law enforcement.
Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud cracked down on speeding drivers in 2008, demanding ISF officials check for seatbelt use. During that period, the number of accidents reportedly fell by 50 percent, but the period of enforcement soon petered out. The issuing of tickets to drivers who disobey road signs is also a haphazard practice, with activists complaining that drivers often talk their way out of fines through bribes.
Nuyttens said that while reactive measures, such as educating drivers about road safety, were important, authorities had to also adopt a “system approach” through safe road designs, training of road designers, and effective transport planning and speed management.
“You can influence the behavior of drivers through effective traffic signs,” he said.
Road safety experts are also urging the Lebanese government to reform the country’s outdated traffic law. Though the law was formulated in 1967, only recent amendments have made the use of seatbelts compulsory.
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