Muscat: Speedsters on Oman’s roads will have to curb their speeding habits as Royal Oman police (ROP) has increased the number of speed radars across the Sultanate.
According to Brigadier Mohammad Bin Awadh Al Rawas, Director General of Traffic with the ROP, the new mobile speed radars would cover secondary areas where fixed radars are not installed.
Talking to media at the Traffic Safety Expo, which concludes on Thursday, the senior police officer urged motorists to follow speed limits on Oman’s roads to avoid accidents. “We now have most of the country’s primary road network monitored by speed radars and that has had impact with speeding offences declining,” he observed.
A spokesman for the ROP revealed that over 90 mobile speed radars have been imported from Germany and are capable of giving sharp pictures of speeding cars. He also added that the mobile speed radars will be installed on patrol vehicles that would cover secondary road network that has no fixed radars.
According to the ROP statistics, there were over 1,100 fatalities and more than 11,600 injuries on Oman’s roads in 2012 and speed is blamed for nearly 90 per cent of these accidents.
However, with the ROP monitoring most roads with speed radars, the rate of traffic accidents has dropped by 22 per cent in the first ten months of this year.
