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Cars wait at the red light on Muroor Road in Abu Dhabi. Picture for illustrative purposes only. Image Credit: Gulf News Archives

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi Police have urged motorists to focus on the roads while driving because being distracted can lead to serious traffic accidents. In fact, failing to be attentive while driving is a traffic offence that can result in an Dh800 fine and four traffic black points, police warned.

Accident clip

Abu Dhabi’s traffic authorities also released a video clip on Friday, showing a serious accident that occurred when a motorist was evidently distracted while driving. The clip shows slow-moving traffic on an Abu Dhabi road. One golden colour SUV on the left-most lane horrifyingly fails to slow down until at the very last moment and rams into the vehicle in front while swerving. The sudden swerve also causes the SUV to hit a number of other cars on the lanes on the right and at the centre, before finally crashing into the road median.

The clip was released as part of Abu Dhabi’s Be Road Safe initiative, which shows road users various instances of wrongful road behaviours recorded on CCTV so that they can be avoided.

Causes for distraction

According to the Police, drivers are most often distracted because they use handheld devices while driving to take pictures, surf the internet, make calls or scroll through social media. Such distractions have time and again turned out to be fatal for motorists, their co-passengers and other road users as well.