Director General of central police operation at Abu Dhabi Police, Major General Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi, inaugurated the Intelligent Traffic Systems Middle East Conference being held in Abu Dhabi Royal Meriden Hotel in presence of high profile local and international personalities.
The conference is organized by the Abu Dhabi Police in collaboration with the Municipality of Abu Dhabi under the patronage of Lt. General H.H Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minster and Minster of Interior.
Addressing the conference, Al Raisi emphasized the importance of this gathering, noting that road and bridges network in the UAE is one of the best in the world and it has more than 30.000 paved kilometers that have been designed according to the latest international specifications.
The Ministry of Interior is giving the issue of providing appropriate solutions to develop traffic systems maximum priority, in coordination with local and federal efforts to keep up with the efforts exerted to improve the road safety levels, said Brigadier Eng. Hussein Al Harithi, director of Abu Dhabi Police Traffic and Patrols Directorate, who is also chairman of the MoI intelligent traffic systems committee.
Studies show that intelligent traffic systems can improve operational capacity of road networks by about 30 per cent, and have contributed to decreasing deaths and injurers resulting from road crashes in some countries to 40 per cent, which encouraged the ministry of interior to form the intelligent systems committee more than three years ago, he added.
Eng. Abdullah Saeed Al Shamesi, Executive Director, Assets & Infrastructure, Abu Dhabi Municipality said that municipality has constructed around 120 intersections, installed 160 surveillance cameras, and control center with 200 kilometers fibers networks and spread 90 CCTV camera system to monitor red signal jumpers.
Participants from Britain, South Africa and France have presented their countries experience in dealing with intelligent traffic systems, and highlighted their advantages in reducing road accidents.
Dr Atif Gharib, from Abu Dhabi Police, has presented the experience of Abu Dhabi in reducing deaths from road crashes through gathering and analyzing information, assuring that deaths went down to 1.9% in 2011 compared with 4.4 in 2007.