Cambodia tries to improve troubled roads

December 27, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

In the past ten years, Cambodia's roads - devastated by years of war and neglect - have improved markedly. And as people have become a bit better off, the number of vehicles on the roads has grown. But that means more road deaths than ever before.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh

Speakers: Preap Chanvibol, director, department of land transport, Phnom Penh; Sann Socheata, road safety programme officer, Handicap International-Belgium

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)

CARMICHAEL: I am standing on Route 5. This is officially Cambodia's most dangerous road in terms of the number of fatalities. Nearly 300 people died on this road last year. I should say it is a very long road, it runs from the capital Phnom Penh and goes a long way west towards the Thai border. Anything that moves really will take to this road, including oxcarts and people on bicycles. So there's a huge speed differential between a lot of these vehicles and driving standards are pretty low in Cambodia. There are only 51 registered driving teachers in the country and last year there were 308,000 new vehicles on the country's roads. So with driving standards low and all these new vehicles clogging up much better, faster roads, the number of road deaths has increased significantly in the last five years. In fact, it's almost doubled from around 900 deaths to 1,700 last year.

There are a lot of obstacles to improvement, which explains why the aim of road safety experts is to slow down the rate of increase.

The head of the government's land transportation department is Preap Chanvibol. He also sits on the National Road Safety Committee.

He says Cambodia has the worst road fatality rate of any nation in the 10 member Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) bloc.

PREAP CHANVIBOL: If we compare with ASEAN, the fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles, the rate is higher than the other ASEAN countries. Up to 2009, the fatality rate is around 12 per 10,000 vehicles.

CARMICHAEL: Preap Chanvibol says the government's approach to reducing road deaths was dictated by statistics that show speeding and alcohol account for more than half of all fatalities.

Head injuries kill many as well, which is no surprise when you consider that 90 per cent of all new registered vehicles are motorbikes.

PREAP CHANVIBOL: We focus on the three cases - these are speed limit, drink driving and helmet wearing, because more than 70 per cent of motorcycle [fatalities include] head injuries. So we focus on helmet wearing also.

CARMICHAEL: Cambodia is a poor country and for that reason most Cambodians use motorbikes rather than cars. But until January 2009 very few of them owned a crash helmet as well.

And fewer still wore it - less than one in five, says Sann Socheata, the road safety programme manager at Handicap International-Belgium, an non government organisation (NGO) that has worked for the past six years with government to reduce road deaths.

But in January 2009 the government brought in a law requiring that all motorbike drivers wear a helmet.

Sann Socheata says that was a significant step forward. Now more than 80 per cent of motorbike drivers wear a helmet during the day and deaths from head injuries have declined as a result.

But, the government's Preap Chanvibol admits, most drivers don't wear helmets at night because the traffic police go home when the sun goes down.

More changes are coming.

From next year traffic police will start working nights and, he says, the government will pass a law that compels motorbike passengers to wear a helmet too.

Sann Socheata says these are important steps and lists a number of other improvements [that are] underway.

SANN SOCHEATA: One of the important interventions is really to increase the capacity of the traffic police in terms of law enforcement, especially for helmet [wearing] and drink driving. And at the same time, very, very recently the government have a kind of willingness and commitment to develop a 10 year action plan - 2011 to 2020 - and this really contributes to the decade of action for road safety for the next ten years.

CARMICHAEL: Work to educate schoolchildren on road safety is also ongoing.

But neither Preap Chanvibol nor Sann Socheata expect fewer people will die in crashes over the next decade, despite their best efforts.

Cambodia's roads have improved so quickly and the number of vehicles has risen so fast that the government's road safety plan is designed merely to slow the rate of increase, not to reverse it.

Sann Socheata says if the road safety plan is properly funded and implemented, it will save nearly 5,000 lives over the next 10 years.

But even then the government expects that 2,200 people will die on the roads in 2020. Route 5 out of Phnom Penh is likely to remain dangerous for a long time yet.