Spain Boosting Africa's Road Safety Efforts

       The cooperation projects are managed by DGT and Civil Guard. PHOTOS: INTERIOR.GOB.ES18 MAR - Spain's General Directory of Traffic (DGT) donated 25 motorcycles to the police in the African country of Mauritania, the Ministry of Interior in Madrid announced.

The 25 training motorcycles are the same model used at the Mérida Traffic School to train the motorists of the Civil Guard Traffic Group.

Initiative

Personnel from the General Directorate of Traffic and the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard have traveled to Mauritania to advise on traffic regulation and surveillance, as well as regulations, databases and indicators of road accidents. The port of Cádiz has been the setting chosen by the General Directorate of Traffic to transfer, by sea, the 25 pieces of machinery destined for the training of the personnel of the General Group of Road Safety of Mauritania (GGSR). The DGT general secretary, María Lidón Lozano, accompanied the General of the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard, Tomás García Gazapo, and the provincial traffic chief in Cádiz, Ana Cobos at the embarkment of the motorcycles.

Model

The motorcycles sent are all-terrain models, with a displacement of 250 cm3 and will serve to instruct the police officers in charge of surveillance and traffic control in Mauritania. This type of training service is the same given to motorcycle officers at the Traffic School of the Civil Guard in Mérida (Badajoz) and which are used to train hundreds of police personnel every year. The motorcycles are to be delivered through the Canary Islands to the port of Nouadhibou, Mauritania.

The 25 pieces of machinery were shipped through the port of Cadiz.Cooperation

The delivery is part of the road safety cooperation project that the General Directorate of Traffic is carrying out with the Mauritanian authorities - a collaboration which includes the training of police personnel in charge of traffic, instruction to develop an effective system for managing road accident databases as well as training and institutional support for regulation of motorcycles and tricycle traffic. To materialize this two experts from the DGT's National Road Safety Observatory traveled to Mauritania in order to learn about the operational qualification needs of the GGSR and the protocols used in their process of data collection. The experts presented a series of actions to be developed in areas such as computer application of traffic crashes, communication of crash information, periodic preparation of statistics, regulatory framework, etc. 5 experts from the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard gave a Basic Course of Road Safety Patrols to personnel of the Mauritanian GGSR. This training course on traffic surveillance and regulation of road safety was complemented with consultation on regulatory matters and administrative procedures related to traffic, vehicles, drivers licences, vehicle registration and documentation, etc. The 3-week course was run at the GGRS school facilities in the capital, Nouakchott and was attended by a total of 94 non-commissioned officers assigned to operational units with competence in surveillance, regulation and control of traffic.