ENG-1989 — Page 265

TRANSPORT

Vehicle Examination

The Transport Department operates four vehicle examination centres to conduct annual re-licensing inspections of all public service vehicles, goods vehicles over 10 years old and vehicles used to carry dangerous goods. Pre-registration and type approval inspections for new goods vehicles and public service vehicles and pre-registration inspections of second-hand imported vehicles of all types are also carried out. The construction of a new computerised inspection centre commenced during 1989 and is expected to be operational in late 1990. This new centre will enable inspection capacity to be increased threefold and enable the department to meet its policy objective of annual inspection of all goods vehicles and trailers.

The annual testing of private cars at 17 designated car testing centres expanded to encompass all cars manufactured before 1983. 78 600 such cars were inspected in 1989 compared to 71 000 in the previous year.

Airport service vehicles are inspected within the airport precincts, while franchised buses are checked at their company depots. The high standard of franchised bus maintenance continued throughout the year, and few prosecutions for serious defects were found to be necessary.

A review of vehicle examination activities was conducted to assess whether privatisation of routine inspections could be extended to more categories of vehicles during the next few years. This would free some resources to improve and streamline the performance of the fundamental tasks of providing better controls and support to the automotive trade in Hong Kong.

Road Safety

Traffic accidents involving injuries decreased by one per cent in 1989. During the year, there were 16 200 accidents, of which 4 112 were serious and 323 fatal. This compares with 16 320 in the previous year (4 290 serious, 290 fatal). In-depth investigations using computerised records were carried out at 152 traffic accident blackspots in order to iden- tify accident causes. Remedial measures were recommended at 124 of these locations. Typically, such measures have been shown to reduce accidents by 28 per cent on average. Accident records were searched to identify sites with unusually large numbers of skidding accidents or accidents during hours of darkness. Seven sites were identified for skid resistant surfacing and nine sites for lighting improvements.

Road safety campaigns continued to play an important role in the reduction of traffic accidents. The major themes of the 1989 campaigns were adult pedestrian safety, particularly the elderly, and promoting road safety for drivers, especially light goods vehicle drivers and those with less than two years' driving experience. Four issues of a Road Safety Quarterly were produced. A series of radio and TV announcements and a TV road safety programme were broadcast.

The Road Traffic Ordinance and its subsidiary regulations have been amended to extend the traffic control and safety provisions of the ordinance to private roads. From July, drivers, motor vehicles, traffic signs and road markings on private roads were required to comply with the ordinance and subsidiary regulations. A Code of Practice for Private Roads was issued as a guide to estate managers.

At the end of 1989, the Road Safety Association of Hong Kong operated 216 School Road Safety Patrols and school staff patrols were operated at 207 schools. The Road Safety Council, an advisory body, continued to co-ordinate all road safety matters in the territory.

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