Idlib: A Campaign Highlights Speeding Hazards

  • 2018/06/09
  • 5:28 pm
A Civil Defense member giving the campaign’s brochures to drivers in Idlib – May 29, 2018 (Civil Defense’s Twitter Account)

A Civil Defense member giving the campaign’s brochures to drivers in Idlib – May 29, 2018 (Civil Defense’s Twitter Account)

In Idlib governorate, the Syrian Civil Defense, White Helmets, has launched a campaign to raise drivers’ awareness of speeding risks while driving cars or motorbikes, under its activities that aim to raise citizens’ awareness in the “liberated” areas.  

The campaign started on (Tuesday) last May 29 and included the distribution of “brochures” to drivers and disseminating posters in public places that warn of the proliferation of accidents in Idlib, which result of the drivers’ “recklessness” and speeding.

The Director of the Civil Defense Directorate in Idlib governorate Mustafa al-Haj Yousef told Enab Baladi that the campaign is launched in the shadow of the suffocating traffic jam that afflicts the governorate in Ramadan, especially prior to the Maghreb prayers, pointing out that public squares and markets strive with cars and people who hurry to their homes to be there in time for Iftar, a thing that increases the potential for traffic accidents.

Al-Haj Yousef added that the campaign, which covered all the cities and rural parts of Idlib, is triggered by the need to raise drivers’ awareness and spread a number of instructions, the most important of which are the need to reduce speed, leaving a safety distance between cars, abstinence from stopping in the middle of the street to purchase needs, avoiding to stop in the roundabout’s surrounding, abstinence from driving while holding a child and abstinence from stopping to watch a car accident.

According to this, the Syrian Civil Defense members started pasting posters with these directives on the walls. The campaign’s materials were also posted on social media platforms to guarantee its reception by as many citizens as possible.

“Free Idlib Police” launched a similar campaign in August 2017 to raise Idlib’s drivers’ awareness, under the slogan “Do Not Quench Your Children’s Smile with an Accident,” aiming to decrease the number of traffic accidents and mitigate their consequences.

For traffic accidents proliferated in the area due to the “drivers’ puerile” and the roads’ lack of readiness and the shelling and military operations which rendered many of them out of service, in addition to the absence of an “infringement” system which the civil police has not yet followed.

 

Back then, the campaign included raising the drivers’ awareness about the necessity to periodically check up on their vehicles and ensuring that they are ready to avoid any malfunctions that would lead to an unexpected traffic accident.

Idlib city’s civil council has reactivated the “Traffic Department” in June 2017 after a tow-year-pause when the governorate went out of the Syrian regime’s control. The Directorate began its work by organizing roads and traffic, as well as issuing registration plates to reduce the risks of traffic accidents and car theft.

Rural Idlib, rural Aleppo, the city of Idlib and the areas of Jarabulus and al-Bab in rural Aleppo are among the most densely populated areas in Syria, especially following the huge displacement influx from Damascus and its countryside, Homs and its country side and other areas.

The population’s density has necessitated organizing the situation of the services offered to citizens and placed the local councils in front of a challenge with the rumors about their bad management of some vital sectors in the areas where they exist, the “Traffic Department” in particular, which administration has suffered a clear arbitrariness that triggered an urgent need for regulatory solutions.

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