RoadSafetyUAE.com, an educational platform targeted at the general public in the UAE, has gone live as of today, aiming to be a permanent and broadly communicated knowledge base for road safety content.

The initiative encourages dialogue and active contributions of users, authorities, other similar platforms and all further stake holders to share their views, experiences and improvement proposals.

Its scope and the permanent nature of the platform set it apart from other, mainly campaign driven, road safety initiatives, said Thomas Edelmann the founder of RoadSafetyUAE.com.

"I personally feel that everyone is responsible safe driving habits, therefore RoadSafetyUAE.com has been launched to try educating people on the current situation and imparting information to them on how to drive more responsibility. This is a serious matter that involves lives,” he added.

Initially, more than 30 topics of road safety get covered, which have a specific relevance to the UAE. Topics include Road Etiquette & Politeness; Speeding; How to Change Lanes Properly; Tire safety; Proper use of Indicators; Pedestrian safety, etc.. The topics hold bite-sized information, providing traffic participants relevant tips of ‘How to do it right!’ and what to ‘Watch out for!’.

Users of the platform can provide comments and improvement on the editorial content and can also suggest new and additional topics. CSR aware companies can ‘adopt’ a topic relevant to them and communicate it, helping to ‘make a difference’.  In addition to the Topic section, there is the blog function ‘Stories’ where users can share their thoughts, experiences and happenings with the community.

Edelmann continued: “Having lived in the UAE for 13 years, I have observed the need to help improve safety on the UAE roads.  The local governments and independent companies have launched campaigns with the aim to educate people on the importance of safe driving.  These campaigns have been effective and still play a role, but more needs to be done for Dubai to reach its aim of zero fatalities on the roads by 2020."

RoadSafetyUAE.com engages with official entities and has already achieved the support of RTA, with more entities to join the platform soon. CSR aware companies like BMW, Michelin and Daman supported the initiative from the very beginning, with more corporate supporters in the starting blocks.

In order to ‘make a difference’ it is vital that awareness for the platform is spread as broadly as possible, ranging from media partnerships over social media to the active support of corporations by addressing their customer bases and by activating their touch points. – TradeArabia News Service