Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently found that Morocco’s intercity roads are among the fastest in the world with a mean speed of 95 kilometers per hour (km/h).
Moroccan roads notably ranked third in Africa in IMF’s road quality and mean speed, behind South Africa (100km/h) and Namibia (99 km/h). Botswana followed in the fourth position with an average of 91 km/h.
Meanwhile, Guinea has the continent’s slowest intercity roads with cars driving at an average of 50km/h, below the widely adopted speed limit of 60km/h. Madagascar followed with 51km/h, while intercity roads in Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania had an average speed ranging between 55 km/h and 60k/m.
The IMF associated the difference in speed ranges between 162 studied countries with the nations’ wealth.
“The world’s fastest roads are found in richer economies including the United States, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Canada,” the organization said in a blog.“The slowest roads are found in the poorest countries.”
The IMF further argued that slow roads are “another obstacle to inclusive growth.”
In May 2022, the global financial institute introduced the road quality and mean speed score as a new cross-country index that measures the mean travel speed between large cities through data collected from Google Maps. The index covered 162 countries with mean speeds ranging from 38 km/h to 107 k/m.
Read Also: Morocco’s DGSN Launches Monitoring Plan to Counter Dangerous Driving
Arguing that “simplicity is a main feature” of the score, IMF says that the metric can support policy-makers to assess their road infrastructure. The metric further allows officials to monitor speeds on smaller roads, particularly in rural areas to overcome road bottlenecks and facilitate the mobility of people and goods for better competitiveness in the global market.
Still, the score does not provide a detailed assessment of road safety or the state of infrastructure, or the availability of the means of transport. Such work requires field research to set nationwide road control strategies such as the one developed by Morocco’s National Road Safety Agency (NARSA) in January.
The two-year Moroccan plan focuses on monitoring violations by obtaining over 550 new generation radars to deter traffic violations such as excessive speeding, driving under the influence, using a phone while driving, and not using a seat belt or helmet.
The new radars can simultaneously monitor up to 24 vehicles while recording the average speed of vehicles, distinguish between light and heavy vehicles, and report the vehicle number plates, says NARSA.
Annually, Morocco records an average of 3,600 fatalities and 150,000 injuries on national roads, as well as more than MAD 20 billion ($2.16 billion) in road accident-related material losses, according to the agency.
