Saudi Arabia's Clergy to Reduce Road Accidents
Religious Leaders Join Road Safety Campaign
The National
Saudi Arabia’s clergy is joining the government in a new campaign to
reduce the growing number of road accidents in the kingdom, which has
one of the highest rates of traffic fatalities in the world.
Last
year, Saudi implemented a strict new system of fines in an attempt to
limit the number of accidents and traffic violations, and the Shoura
Council, the country’s parliament, approved a new road safety plan. Yet
in a country where one person dies almost every hour in road accidents,
linking traffic safety to one’s religious obligations may prove to be
more effective in the ultraconservative society.
According to traffic department figures, 485,931 accidents took
place on the kingdom’s roads in 2008, killing 6,458 people and injuring
36,486. The number of accidents has been found to increase during the
summer.
Sheikh Salman al Oudah, a leading religious scholar,
appears in most of the traffic department’s awareness campaign
advertisements of its newly installed automated traffic violation
monitoring system (Saher).
In the ad, Mr al Oudah links speeding to suicide, which is
considered an unforgivable sin in Islam. Mr al Oudah says, “crazy
speeding is [suicidal and] will capture your soul and the souls of
others [who speed]”.
Col Abdulrahman bin Abdullah Al Moqbil, the
supervising head of the Saher campaign, said including a religious
dimension to the campaign was important, and he hoped it would have a
positive effect on all segments of society and help limit traffic
violations.
Saudi Arabia’s clergy is joining the government in a new campaign to
reduce the growing number of road accidents in the kingdom, which has
one of the highest rates of traffic fatalities in the world.
Last
year, Saudi implemented a strict new system of fines in an attempt to
limit the number of accidents and traffic violations, and the Shoura
Council, the country’s parliament, approved a new road safety plan. Yet
in a country where one person dies almost every hour in road accidents,
linking traffic safety to one’s religious obligations may prove to be
more effective in the ultraconservative society.
According to traffic department figures, 485,931 accidents took
place on the kingdom’s roads in 2008, killing 6,458 people and injuring
36,486. The number of accidents has been found to increase during the
summer.
Sheikh Salman al Oudah, a leading religious scholar,
appears in most of the traffic department’s awareness campaign
advertisements of its newly installed automated traffic violation
monitoring system (Saher).
In the ad, Mr al Oudah links speeding to suicide, which is
considered an unforgivable sin in Islam. Mr al Oudah says, “crazy
speeding is [suicidal and] will capture your soul and the souls of
others [who speed]”.
Col Abdulrahman bin Abdullah Al Moqbil, the
supervising head of the Saher campaign, said including a religious
dimension to the campaign was important, and he hoped it would have a
positive effect on all segments of society and help limit traffic
violations.
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