We are delighted to be working with the National Road Safety Agency (NARSA) and General Department of Roads (GDR) to shape a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to eliminate high-risk roads in Morocco.

This has important context as Morocco’s Minister for Transport heads to this week’s UN High-level Meeting on Road Safety in New York to work alongside world leaders to shape The 2030 horizon for road safety: Securing a decade of action and delivery.

Pictured above are Azeddine Chahidi, Head of Driving and Vehicle Safety, NARSA; Rob McInerney, CEO, iRAP; Benacer Boulaajoul, Director General, NARSA; and Abdessadek Maafa, Head of Communication, Education and Road Prevention, NARSA celebrating steps towards the development of MoroRAP at May’s International Transport Forum in Leipzig.

The partnership will look to:

• Develop programmes and measures to reduce the toll of road deaths and serious injuries in Morocco;
• Assess roads which are likely to have the worst levels of road fatalities and to generate a programme of affordable high return engineering and other countermeasures capable of rapid implementation;
• Build capacity within the road safety engineering sector; and
• Work together to implement the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 in Morocco.

30 people have already been trained on how to make roads safer in the country informed by the iRAP Methodology.

Morocco’s Government announced the creation of NARSA in 2018. Through its 2017-2026 National Road Safety Strategy, the agency plans to decrease road fatalities across Morocco by 50% between 2015 and 2026.

Nearly 7,000 fatalities occur on Morocco’s roads each year (WHO, 2015). According to iRAP’s Vaccines for Roads Big Data Tool, achieving greater than 75% of travel on 3-star or better roads for all road users by 2030 stands to save more than 515,000 fatalities and serious injuries over the 20 year life of road treatments with an economic benefit of nearly USD$28 billion – a benefit of $25 for every $1 spent.

Image source: iRAP