Dubai: Heavy fatigue experienced by professional drivers in the UAE logging far too many hours on the country’s highways presents a real threat to road safety, says Dubai police chief.
Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina confronted the issues head-on during live radio on Tuesday when he placed a phone call to the Direct Line programme to talk about road safety in wake of the horrific bus crash earlier this week in Dubai.
Speaking to the fatal calamity in which 13 labourers were killed on Saturday when their bus slammed into a parked truck on Emirates Road, Major General Al Mazeina suggested that an electronic system to record the driving logs of commercial truck drivers should be installed on UAE and GCC highways to stem illegal overtime behind the wheel.
Maj Gen Al Mazeina acknowledged concerns by some motorists regarding the lack of rest stop areas along highways where drivers can seek a brief respite from long stretches of road travelling.
He said that the Roads and Transportation Authority (RTA) has been working on the issue and has constructed up a few rest points in response.
However, Maj Gen Al Mazeina reiterated that long hours of driving and resulting fatigue is the real issue.
“Drivers should not drive more than six hours at a time and should get sufficient rest in between. Drivers can take to a side road and find an empty lot, where they can park their vehicle and rest,” he said.
“Police patrols will not fine drivers if they are parked away from the main road and are not parked in a way that poses a threat to other drivers. The driver can take as much rest as he needs without facing any consequences,” he said.
What needs to be done, he explained, is implementing a system, that has already been used in the US and Europe that tracks the hours a driver has been driving and if he was on the road at times were heavy-vehicles are not allowed to be.
The system consists of electronic checkpoints on highways where drivers have to check in and the checkpoint takes the driver’s readings.
If a police patrol stops the driver, they can easily know exactly if he was abiding to the rules or regulations or not.
