Cambodia tries to improve troubled roads

December 27, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

In the past ten years, Cambodia's roads - devastated by years of war and neglect - have improved markedly. And as people have become a bit better off, the number of vehicles on the roads has grown. But that means more road deaths than ever before.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh

Speakers: Preap Chanvibol, director, department of land transport, Phnom Penh; Sann Socheata, road safety programme officer, Handicap International-Belgium

Listen: Windows Media

CARMICHAEL: I am standing on Route 5. This is officially Cambodia's most dangerous road in terms of the number of fatalities. Nearly 300 people died on this road last year. I should say it is a very long road, it runs from the capital Phnom Penh and goes a long way west towards the Thai border. Anything that moves really will take to this road, including oxcarts and people on bicycles. So there's a huge speed differential between a lot of these vehicles and driving standards are pretty low in Cambodia. There are only 51 registered driving teachers in the country and last year there were 308,000 new vehicles on the country's roads. So with driving standards low and all these new vehicles clogging up much better, faster roads, the number of road deaths has increased significantly in the last five years. In fact, it's almost doubled from around 900 deaths to 1,700 last year.

There are a lot of obstacles to improvement, which explains why the aim of road safety experts is to slow down the rate of increase.

The head of the government's land transportation department is Preap Chanvibol. He also sits on the National Road Safety Committee.
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