kunhadi: an association for youth awareness on road safety

KUNHADI: An association for youth awareness on road safety

http://kunhadi.org/main/

Important Announcement :

On Hady Gebrane’ second memorial date April 16, 2008, a Mass will take place on at 17:30 at St. Antoine de Padou Church, Horch Tabet. A Drink Driving Campaign will be also launched on that day and for two weeks.

Life is Forever Worth Living

I Lost my Life...
Save Yours.

Every Year, an alarming number of young people between 16 and 21 lose their lives behind the steering wheel in an abrupt and tragic crash.

Kunhadi was born in the aftermath of the car accident that cost me my life.

In a courageous move to extricate himself from lamenting over my tragic death, Ralph, a close friend and brethren came up with the sublime idea to create an association to protect the young and help them pass safely the critical age of the younger generations’ greedy want for driving cars.

Kunhadi is Ralph’s mother choice to keep my memory alive and demise useful.
Kunhadi aims at helping the young and restless to drive with awareness and self-control..

Your car is not a travelling Coffin.
Think about your dear ones.
Don’t allow their lives to be shattered.

Be Brave, Drive Carefully.
Hady … from beyond

Kunhadi road safety objectives

The World Health Organization and the World Bank stress that globally road crashes are the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 29 years and the third leading cause of death among people aged 30 to 44 years. Road crashes kill 1.2 million people every year and injure or disable between 20 million and 50 million more. Without immediate action to improve road safety, it is estimated that road traffic deaths will increase by 80% in low- and middle- income countries by 2020. A joint report launched by the organizations today demonstrates in no uncertain terms that "Road Safety is no Accident."

"Thousands of people die on the world's roads everyday. We are not talking about random events or accidents. We are talking about road crashes whose risks can be understood and therefore can be prevented," said Dr Lee Jong-Wook, Director-General, World Health Organization. "Road safety is no accident. We have the knowledge to act now.”

We are all road users at some time, whether as drivers, cyclists, pedestrians or passengers. Road Safety is an issue that affects us all. Every week, friends, neighbors, family members or workmates start a journey that they never complete.

My wife and I lost a son, our two daughters a brother and our community has lost someone who was making a valuable contribution. His friends and family decided to establish an association for youth awareness on road safety called Kunhadi.

Kunhadi’s goal is to work on lowering the road car accidents toll in Lebanon.

Better community understanding of road safety issues and solutions is important in achieving our goal. As a community we now have greater awareness and understanding of the factors contributing to road deaths and injuries.

Drink driving should be regarded as socially unacceptable. We need to change people’s attitude to speeding, driving while fatigued and not wearing seat belts to reduce the road toll.

Speeding

Speeding is the greatest contributor to road fatalities, and young drivers are amongst those who suffer most in road accidents. Young drivers continue to be over-represented in accident statistics year after year.

A major road safety issue is speeding. Speeding increases both the likelihood of crash occurring and the severity of injury caused by road crashes. A priority of road safety is to reduce the problem of speeding. If we can prevent motorist from speeding we will dramatically reduce the road toll.

Driving at lower speeds will allow a better chance of either stopping in time to avoid a collision with an object or a person, or will reduce the severity of impact and injury.

When a car hits a pedestrian at 80 km/h there is 85% chance the pedestrian will die. At 50 km/h the chance death drops to 45%.

Drink Driving

Drink driving particularly on week-ends and amongst young drivers, continue to be over-represented in accident statistics year after year.

You don’t have to be drunk to be affected by alcohol. No one drives as well as usual after drinking alcohol, even though some people may look and act as though they are unaffected. Alcohol is a depressant drug that affects most areas of the brain.

As a driver’s blood alcohol concentration rises, the greater are the risks he may take so does the risk of being involved in a crash.

Alcohol:

1. Slows brain functions so that you can’t respond to situations, make decisions or react quickly.
2. Reduces your ability to judge how fast you are moving or your distance from other cars, people or objects.
3. Gives you false confidence – You may take greater risks because you think your driving is better than it really is.
4. Makes it harder to do more than one thing at a time – while you concentrate on steering, you could miss seeing a red light, cars entering from side streets or pedestrians.
5. Makes you feel sleepy or fatigued.

Once alcohol has been consumed its effects on driving cannot be reversed. Getting your blood alcohol concentration back to zero takes time and no amount of coffe, food, physical ability or sleep will speed up the process. The only thing that will sober you up once you have stopped drinking alcohol is time.

Seat Belts

Statistics showed that 80% of road deaths were not wearing seatbelts.

The reason for the higher rate of non-use among those killed is because you are much more likely to be killed if you do not wear a seat belt.

Wearing seat belts can save the lives of drivers and passengers.

Driver Fatigue

Fatigue describes the experience of being “sleepy”, “tired” or “exhausted”. Driver fatigue is a factor of fatal crashes.

Driver fatigue can severely impair judgment and can affect anyone.

Most fatigue crashes in Lebanon occur between:
- 3 pm and 5 pm
- 11 pm and 8 am

In order to avoid fatigue crashes, the driver should pull over to the nearest place to rest.
Symptoms on driver fatigue vary among drivers, but may include:

• yawning
• poor concentration
• tired or sore eyes
• microsleeps
• having difficulty staying in the lane
• missing road signs
• restlessness
• drowsiness
• slow reactions
• feeling irritable