Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
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Morocco has about 100,000 civil associations which are active in various sectors of social and
cultural welfare. In 2011, the constitutional law was changed to provide room for a larger
involvement of these associations in the process of proposing and preparing legislation,
including the legislation concerning road safety.
Monitoring and evaluation
Although there are various information systems in place in Morocco, these are in principle all
stand-alone systems serving a specific purpose. For road safety management to be effective, a
comprehensive information platform containing data relating to crashes, vehicles, drivers,
enforcement and adjudication, traffic (speeds, volumes etc.) is required. Since monitoring is an
essential component of a management system, these data need to be accurate, current and
reliable. Many of these data are not readily available (e.g. at the Local authority level) and it is
anticipated that initially such a system will be developed around data on the national (rural)
road network. Since these data serve many end-users it may be logical to establish a central
unit/agency responsible for data collection, validation and quality control. This would seem to
logically fit in the activities of the Roads and Road Traffic Department.
The current data collection, analysis, validation and sharing mechanisms of road safety
management information in Morocco are not optimal for effective management of crashes in the
country. In most cases no performance based criteria have been set for potential road safety
indicators but this could be due to the fact that benchmarks cannot be set because the data
needed to set themare unavailable. Although there are state of the art registration systems these
are not always linked with other systems and or have attempts to integrate these been explored.
A detailed review of the systems may be required to identify opportunities for exploiting these
data to improve road safety management and to facilitate target setting.
Research and development and knowledge transfer
Research, development and knowledge transfer on road safety matters take place on an ad-hoc
basis in Morocco. In the particular area of post-crash response various scientific evaluations
have been performed bymedical universities (Mohammedia, 2010; Messnan, 2014; Mohammed,
2013; Rhidifa, 2013; Kandri Rody, 2015). A dedicated road safety research programme, backed
by sustainable funding sources and carried out by dedicated research staff is currently not
apparent. This project is an example of one which typifies capacity building and professional
exchange but needs to be expanded to include all aspects of road safety. The feasibility of
establishing a dedicated road safety research institute as an independent entity or as part of a
future road safety agency needs to be further explored.
By far, cooperation between the different road safety stakeholders was mentioned as the key to
improve road safety. The broad representation of Moroccan officials (DTRSR, CNEH, CNPAC,
CNER, Police and Gendarme) was warmly welcomed. This cooperation is promising and should
be maintained and expanded.