JEDDAH – Whenever a traffic accident occurs, tens of curious bystanders gather around the scene and hamper the work of policemen and rescue teams, eventually creating traffic congestion which can take hours to clear up. One victim of bystanders' curiosity, Haifa, found herself surrounded by bystanders when her car was involved in a minor accident. “Upon seeing the accident, passersby started shouting ‘There's an accident here! Come quick and check it out!' while others called their friends to inform them that they had witnessed an accident. Haifa said not a single bystander offered any help and on the contrary, they blocked the roads and made it difficult for emergency vehicles to get to the scene of the accident. A similar incident occurred to Ghalia Al-Thaqafi, when her car was hit on the Makkah-Jeddah Highway. Though it was a small accident, people gathered around the two cars and made it difficult for emergency vehicles to get through. And, as with Haifa, no one offered to help Ghalia, who was confined to the car for two hours. Officials have long urged bystanders not to crowd accident scenes but the morbid appeal of traffic accidents can be hard to resist. Roa Al-Zahrani said that when she and her brother saw a crowd of people watching an accident and blocking the roads, her brother was furious and shouted at bystanders to move out of the way. “Yet, when my brother got closer to the scene of the accident scene, he forgot his anger and stopped to watch rescue efforts,” she said. Traffic accidents in the Kingdom claimed the lives of 7,512 people in 2011 and over 544,000 accidents occurred despite the installation of the Saher traffic monitoring system. Approximately, 62 accidents occur every hour and cause the death of 20 people every day, according to statistics announced by Maj. Gen. Sulaiman Al-Ajlan, Director of Traffic in the Kingdom.
