Sherif Makhlouf: Road Technology Paving the Way to improving Egypt’s road safety

Sherif Makhlouf, a member of the Egyptian Junior Business Association (EJB) and CEO of BOOST Consulting Company, said since 2014, Egypt has allocated EGP 175 billion building and upgrading about 7,000KM roads and about 55% of this effort has been achieved so far.

The effects of such efforts are already starting to be felt by many Egyptians in terms of access and quality of the road networks.

In a very clear sign of progress, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Report has improved Egypt’s ranking in terms of the quality of road infrastructure from 118th place in 2014 to 28th worldwide in 2019.

Part of the road network expansion and improvement initiative by the government is another first of its kind project entailing the implementation of a nationwide smart system for roads.

The initial phase of the project includes six highways: the Cairo-Suez road, Cairo-Ismailia-Port Said road, the Regional Ring Road, Katameya-Ain Sokhna road, Shubra-Benha freeway, and Cairo-Alexandria desert road.

All roads joining the smart system will be under 24/7 surveillance and monitoring by a network of cameras. This will enable the traffic controllers to understand traffic flow and speeding and register any violations.

The visibility of such systems with its lights, flashes, and counters will also help improve drivers’ behavior knowing that their actions will have consequences which will in part help citizens abide by the laws and regulations, a major issue that has caused thousands of deaths and damages daily on Egyptian roads.

Another major advantage of such digitalization is the ability to streamline the process of traffic tickets with instant notifications via SMS to violators and the ability to appeal and pay such violations electronically.

Besides, another major benefit of such systems is the use of data analytics to deeper understand the infrastructure and how it's being used, including figuring out traffic bottlenecks, safety issues in areas of recurring accidents, and seasonality and trends.

In recent years, the drop in prices of technologies such as smart cameras with drastic development of the internet of things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence have opened the doors of the wide implementation of such systems and Egypt is at the forefront of such an exciting journey.

Of course, this technology needs to be combined with raising public awareness of speeding and seat-belt wearing, improving speed enforcement and strengthening penalties for non-compliance, strengthening requirements for issuing new licenses, and engaging the civil society to advocate for road safety.