crash ranks second as a cause of deaths for Thai males in 1999 , behind AIDS which accounted for 17% while road crashes caused 7% of deaths ( Thai Health 2546). In 2002, the national road tolls stood at 13,116 resulting from 91,623 road crashes. Of these, some 11,500 deaths occurred in regional areas outside Bangkok whose death tolls amounts to some 1500, thanks to the very slow traffic speed. Roadside crashes form a significant portion of road crashes on highways under the jurisdiction of the Department of Highways. Statistics from 1998-2003 indicate that roadside crashes constitute between 26-34 % of all crashes on the nation highways which totalled 15,570 and 17,555 in 1998 and 2003 respectively, with the number of roadside crashes ranging from 4,088 to 5,892 for the corresponding periods. Roadside crashes involve run off the road and rollover accidents or run off the road and hit roadside hazards. With trees being newly planted or growing on roadsides both left and right where they are planted on the depressed median, it is imperative that these man-made future and present roadside hazards be highlighted. The potential danger posed by electricity poles, guardrails, old style reinforced concrete guide posts, kilometer posts and traffic sign posts are obvious and need to be addressed. The inadequacy of guard rail/concrete barriers at sharp curves onto which erring vehicles have been known to crash requires official attention. This paper describes the current situation on roadside crashes using crash data collected by the Department of Highways. It attempts to quantify the magnitude and determine the characteristics of the problem and recommend strategies for improving the roadside safety of the nation’s highways.

This study investigates the association between drivers’ socio-economic characteristics of the drivers in Qatar and Oman and their speed violations. The characteristics considered here include monthly income, age, level of education, marital status, gender type, driving experience and accident involvement. Regression analysis was carried out to data gathered from around 4000 drivers, from two countries, using a questionnaire involving short answers on the required characteristics. Official records were not possible to be used since they do not properly represent the actual drivers’ population, simply because of the considerable amount of tickets issued to the owners of the vehicles rather than to the violating drivers. The model developed for Qatar showed drivers’ age, driving experience, salary, education, and education squared to be significantly associated with speed citation involvement. Those for Oman’s model included age, age squared, salary, salary squared, male, accident involvement (total), and own-fault accident involvement. Age, age squared, education, education squared, salary squared, and own-fault accident involvement showed negative associations and the other parameters showed positive associations. In the presence of these variables, all the remaining variables become unbalanced and are automatically removed form the models. Although the above findings of young wealthy male drivers who are well educated are involved in more over-speeding violations are obvious in the Western countries, yet very scarce studies related to the matter are found in the Arab countries.

Road work zones induce problems to the traffic flow, giving rise to a local decrease of the safety level, which depends on a lot of factors, as type of work, type of road, volume, composition and speed of traffic flow, road alignment, weather conditions and visibility. At roadwork sites an increase in accident rate and severity occurs. Accident rate and severity reduction at roadwork sites requires an integrated and systematic approach aimed at identifying and solving the safety problems of the work zone. An effective approach, which is quickly spreading at international level, is the work zone safety audit in both urban and rural areas. In countries where there are not work zone standards or guidelines related to traffic management and safety aspects, such procedure may be beneficial in providing a general safety improvement in the roadwork practice. The objectives of a safety audit at work zones are: