During the Moroccan trade mission to the Netherlands in March 2013, a delegation of the Moroccan Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and the National Committee for the Prevention of Road Traffic Accidents (CNPAC) visited the Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV), the Dutch vehicle and driving license registration authority (RDW) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment.
Follow-up contacts between CNPAC and SWOV/RDW have resulted in CNPAC requesting the Netherlands to provide capacity and knowledge to contribute to the building of road safety expertise in Morocco.
Following this request from CNPAC, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (formerly Agentschap Nederland) was approached via the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs to provide the necessary funding. This culminated in a project proposal being developed by SWOV, RDW and CNPAC which was formally approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 27 September 2013. The project was financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the Matra-South Programme that is carried out by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
The project plan involved the following activities:
- Start-up road safety seminar and kick off-meeting (December 2013);
- Drafting an inception report providing an outline for the planning, preparation and content of workshops and study visits (March 2014);
- Study visit to the Netherlands (June 2014) and two workshops/training sessions in the Netherlands and Rabat (April, June and October 2014);
- Preparing a final report (December 2014).
This report focuses on reviewing specifically the institutional management function of Research and Development (R&D). It concentrates on data supporting the R&D function with specific emphasis on enforcement and vehicle and to a lesser extent on (driver) registration and standards.
Overall, research, development and knowledge dissemination on road safety matters take place on an ad-hoc basis in Morocco. A dedicated road safety research programme, backed by sustainable funding sources and carried out by dedicated research staff is currently not present. This project is an example of one which focuses on capacity building and professional exchange but needs to be expanded to include all aspects of road safety. The feasibility of establishing a dedicated road safety research institute as an independent entity or as part of a future road safety agency needs to be further explored.
Effective R&D is dependent on good quality road safety data. The current data collection, analysis, validation and sharing mechanisms of road safety management information in Morocco are not optimal for effective management of crash prevention in the country. In most cases no performance based criteria have been set for potential road safety indicators. This could however be due to the fact that benchmarks cannot be set because the necessary data is unavailable. Although there are state of the art registration systems, these are not always linked with other systems and/or attempts to integrate these have not been explored. A detailed review of these systems may be required to identify opportunities for exploiting this data to improve road safety management and to facilitate target setting.
It is recommended to improve the data exchange cooperation between the different stakeholders (e.g. DTRSR, CNEH, CNPAC, CNER, Police and Gendarme) to increase road safety. In various processes it was observed that the flow of information between the different institutions was complex or non-existent. The Dutch model can be used as an example of good practice.
This final report describes the results of these activities, and in addition to the above, formulates a number of recommendations and actions which are intended to assist road safety authorities in Morocco toward adopting a safe system approach for road safety management.
