Prince Michael of Kent (left) at Williams Technology Centre at Qatar Science and Technology Park yesterday. Abdul Basit
By Isabel Ovalle
DOHA: Williams F1 is working on education projects to promote road safety in Qatar, and considers putting a driving simulator with accurate images of Doha at the disposal of students. Williams is working with Mowasalat to train taxi drivers as well.
To address these issues Prince Michael of Kent, patron of the Williams F1 team, visited the Williams Technology Centre in Qatar yesterday, accompanied by Alex Burns, CEO of Williams, and the founder of Williams, Sir Frank Williams, among others.
Williams Advanced Engineering in Qatar has taken the simulator technology used by the Williams F1 Team to train its racing drivers and adapted and extended it for use as a training tool for road going vehicles.
The simulator has been developed in partnership with Mowasalat, Qatar’s transport company, and aims to improve the safety, environmental efficiency, passenger comfort and cost efficiency of drivers.
The simulator was developed and built at the Williams Technology Centre in Doha’s Science and Technology Park, using the skills of local Qatari engineers and graduates.
It has a state-of-the-art software package called 3D Doha that accurately maps the roads of Doha and simulates realistic driving scenarios. Drivers also sit in an authentic chassis with true to life controls further adding to the simulator’s realism.
After taking a tour through the Williams Technology Centre at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) and trying out the simulator personally, Prince Michael of Kent said that “the work they are doing here is very interesting, because they are using their technical knowledge of F1 to help the man in the street with driving skills.”
Kent is involved with Global Road Safety Commission, a UN based organisation.
“Our aim is to reduce the amount of deaths and serious injuries by 2020. At the moment every year more people get killed on the roads, we hope to decline it by half in 10 years”, he explained.
Prince Michael said that the collaboration between Qatar Foundation and Williams on road safety is “just the beginning of a very important movement”.
In this context, he stated that if Qatar keeps working on this direction on road safety, it will receive international recognition after taking this project to other countries, “they could get all the credit”.
On the other hand, Sir Frank Williams explained that “we are in Qatar to invest in applying F1 technology to everyday life, particularly road safety. The team has had a long affinity with the Middle East, including when I was first sponsored by a Saudi airline company in 1977”.
Frank Williams added that “the prince is, and has been for a very long time, an advocate of road safety and has a relationship with the Ruling Family here. He is here to understand what we’re doing with road safety in Qatar”. The Peninsula
