RAWALPINDI, Dec 9: The government will formulate a five-year road safety plan to minimize the number of accidents, Federal Communications Secretary Iftikhar Rashid said here on Thursday.

Speaking at the concluding session of the international seminar on road safety at the National University of Sciences and Technology, he regretted that previous governments failed to come up with any concrete solution to the growing number of accidents on the country's roads as they never thought about the issue.

The secretary said the government would shortly form a group to assess the level of three important components of road safety - Education Engineering and Enforcement - and to set targets.

"The government is committed to meeting this formidable challenge of attending simultaneously to these three facets of road safety," he said, and added that the government considered it a vital national duty to maintain and operate the highway infrastructure in safe driving conditions.

Mr Rashid said besides education, engineering and enforcement there was yet another factor that needed to be properly taken into consideration for improving road safety and that was of the environment.

"A proper and conducive environment with reduced violations and improved monitoring has to be provided to motorists throughout the country," he observed, adding that the government was aware of this and was working step by step towards this goal.

Mentioning other steps being planned by the government for improving road safety, he said driving schools would be standardized to international level and a minimum driving training would be made compulsory for everyone. A driver training project is being launched in Karachi.

He said research institutes and organizations would be identified and developed for undertaking research programmes in road safety. Traffic signals, he said, would be improved to conform to international standards. Besides, road safety units would be set up and crash prevention and safety engineering training would be imparted.

Dr Azam Khan from Curtin University of Technology Western Australia recommended collection of road accident data and its subsequent utilization for formulating strategy for road safety; formulation of local standards for road signs and their implementation, monitoring and maintenance; and installation of red-light cameras at busy intersections for prevention of road accidents.

Habibur Rehman, a faculty member at the National Institute of Transportation, a constituent institute of NUST, suggested that a national transport policy be formulated at the earliest and Road Safety Five Year Plan be incorporated in it.