The Swedish Ambassador to Qatar, Ewa Polano (right), MD of SWEROAD, Jonas Hermanson (centre) and Trade and Sweden Promotion Officer at the Embassy of Sweden, Mattias Nordfeldt, addressing the local media at a news conference at the embassy in Doha yesterd
DOHA: Along other measures being taken to achieve goals of National Road Safety Strategy, the government is likely to deploy vehicle-mounted cameras to detect speeding vehicles. A pilot project is already under way for the past few months on Doha’s roads.
“One civilian vehicle with sophisticated speed camera is already operating on the roads for the past few months,” said Ewa Polano, Ambassador of Sweden to Qatar, in a formal interaction with media yesterday.
The project is being implemented in collaboration with Swedish companies.
Jonas Hermanson, Managing Director at SWEROAD, a Swedish state-owned road-safety company and some other representatives of Swedish private companies including Sensys Gatso and Volvo were also present on the occasion.
The envoy said that Sensys Gatso, a leading Swedish provider of solutions in traffic management is behind the vehicle-mounted pilot project. The company has also installed 46 most-sophisticated static speed cameras in Doha.
Speaking on behalf of Sensys Gatso, Mohammad Vadiee said that the pilot project had been successful and hoped the company would get initial order of 1 to 10 units during the upcoming Milipol Qatar.
He said that the company has installed speed cameras on Salwa Road.
“Thirty two units are fully functional and some are dummy ones,” he added.
On vehicle-mounted speed camera, he said the pilot project had passed all tests including the one related to bearing extreme heat during summer.
The ambassador added, “In line with the Qatar’s National Traffic Safety Committee recommendations and the recent approval of the Prime Minister and Interior Minister to bring some international experts for a short period to assess the current awareness and education programmes and develop guidelines and action plans on road safety to be used by various agencies in Qatar during the next five years based on local conditions and international best practice, two highly qualified experts from Sweden have been selected for this task.”
These Swedish experts are well known international professionals and currently implementing similar projects financed by the European Union to assess migrant drivers .
She said the talks between two countries over a specialised research on road safety were also underway. “Qatar University has a Road Safety Studies Center. We are trying to conduct a research with the help of Qatar National Research Fund,” she added.
The ambassador said that in collaboration with a Qatari businessman, Swedish government was planning to enhance capacity of driving schools in Qatar.
