The National Road Safety Agency (NARSA), as part of its national strategy for road safety between 2017 and 2026, which is divided into two phases, the first from 2017 to 2021 and the second from 2022 to 2026, aims to reduce the number of road accident deaths in Morocco.
To achieve that, NARSA launched a campaign in the city of Tangier, as part of its efforts to achieve its stated goals: reduce traffic accident fatalities by minus 25% in the first phase and minus 50% in the second phase.
Hassan Habbazi, the regional director of NARSA in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, says that the reference year adopted within the framework of the strategy is the year 2015, in which Morocco recorded 3,776 dead, and it was supposed to reach less than 2,800 dead in 2021, but the registered number was 3,685, which means recording a decrease without reaching the required number.
The second goal for the year 2026 remains to reach less than 50% of the death toll compared to the 2015 statistics. That is less than 1,900 deaths per year. Therefore, NARSA decided to intensify its awareness-raising activities, within the framework of direct communication with citizens in order to urge them to Respect traffic laws more and avoid the causes of accidents.
The choice of NARSA for the northern region of Morocco to embrace its communication corridor was not random, as the figures confirm that the region also records large numbers of traffic accidents annually. In 2015, 285 people were killed due to traffic accidents, a number that the strategy worked, in its regional dimension, to reduce in two stages.
The goal was to record less than 214 dead in 2021, but this number seemed unattainable, as the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region recorded 291 victims at the end of that year, more than what was recorded during the reference year, which meant the need to redouble efforts.
According to Habbazi, an important glimmer of hope appeared in 2022, as at the end of the year the region recorded 263 deaths, a decline of minus 7,7% which is an encouraging result recorded in the first year of the second phase of the regional strategy, which was set as its goal at the end of 2026, to record less than 143 deaths.
Summer special status
The summer season was chosen to embrace this phase of awareness-raising activities, coinciding with the summer vacation that witnesses the return of members of the Moroccan community residing abroad, as 500,000 vehicles are added to the streets of the Kingdom, which means higher rates of traffic accidents.
One of the issues that focus on the awareness-raising activities of NARSA in its national regional strategy is two- and three-wheel motorcycle drivers, due to the huge number of victims who fall annually despite attempts to reduce those numbers, which in 2020 alone reached 80 dead in the Tangier Tetouan Al Hoceima region.
Referring to the five main bets of the national and regional strategies, we find that it places the first bet on pedestrians as the most prominent victims of traffic accidents, followed directly by two- and three-wheel motorcycles, before the rest of the other three bets represented in accidents caused by one vehicle, children under 14 years old, and professional transportation.
According to Hassan Habbazi, the status of the two categories of pedestrians and motorcyclists in the forefront is due to their recording together of 70% of the total number of deaths annually, and therefore they are included in the category of defenseless, and NARSA's awareness campaigns focus a lot on educating road users of the dangers facing these two categories.
At the level of the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, the matter is not much different from the national figures. In the year 2022 alone, 88 people were killed among pedestrians and 80 among riders of two- and three-wheeled motorcycles, which means 64 percent of the total number of deaths at the regional level.
According to the agency’s figures, the number recorded during 2015, the year whose statistics are considered a reference for the national and regional strategies, is 53 dead in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, and the goal in 2017 was to reach 51 dead, but the number rose to 58. However, the numbers decreased over the next three years.
Thus, the year 2018 recorded a total of 47 dead, and the year 2019 recorded 44 dead, then 38 dead in 2020, all of which are numbers consistent with the planned goal through the strategy, but in the year 2021 the goal was to reach less than 40 dead, but on the ground, 75 victims fell. Things got worse in 2022, with 80 deaths recorded instead of 37, the number that the goal was not to exceed.
At the level of the law, motorcycle users are obligated to wear a protective helmet, and violators are punished with a fine ranging between 150 and 300 dirhams and the withdrawal of two points from the driver's license, for bikes whose cylinder capacity exceeds 50 cubic centimeters. Whereas, NARSA recommends wearing a protective helmet, which reduces the rate of serious and fatal head injuries by between 20 and 45 percent.
In addition, the agency tries to reach as many road users as possible, especially motorcyclists, to communicate with them and convince them of the need to respect traffic laws in general and to take the necessary precautions to avoid traffic accidents. It also distributes high-quality and legally approved helmets to many users of two- and three-wheeled bicycles and teaches them the correct way to wear the helmets in order to be effective in front of any accident.
NARSA focuses in its campaign on educating drivers and pedestrians on the importance of respecting the laws related to the passage of pedestrians, after the high number of traffic accident victims of pedestrians, as it reached 1000 dead annually on the roads of Morocco, and one out of every 3 people who are victims of accidents are pedestrians, so the agency intensifies its efforts directed at drivers as well as pedestrians, in order to achieve the goals of the National Strategy for Road Safety and the sub-regional strategies.
In the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, the number of pedestrians killed during the year 2015 reached 105. During the first year of the strategy, it was supposed to reach 102 or less, but the number rose to 119.
Nevertheless, the strategy continues its endeavors to educate road users on the need to pay attention to the safety of pedestrians, as they are at the top of its five priorities while recording a gradual improvement in the annual figures, as during the year 2022 the road network in the region recorded 88 dead, while the underlined target was less from 74.
