Carnage On Sheikh Zayed Road

Driving on SZR always used to give me the willies, even in clear weather. Driving on it in fog had me turning religious and hoping there actually was a God who was listening to my prayers. Because the sad fact is that 99% of people on that road have no clue whatsoever about how you should drive in fog. This morning there has been absolute carnage on SZR. Accurate figures are yet to arrive, but we can say at least six dead, 300 injured, and 200 cars trashed. In one out of about five incidents. This is completely insane. Nobody seems to know or understand why this happened. I hate to be a smart-arse, but this is why it happened: they were going too fucking fast.

Simplissimo.

Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point. It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article says 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, emerging out of the fog 6 metres ahead of you, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. The only consolation is that they might be in the outer lanes while you are sticking to the inside one. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.

Let me get really boring and repeat: if you can only see 10 metres ahead of you, you should not be travelling so fast that you cannot stop within, say, eight metres. Got it? Your car is probably no longer than 2.5 or 3 metres long. To be able to stop in such a short distance, you should be crawling at less than 10 kmph (166 metres per minute). And forget about being late for work. You are going to be late for work. And so is your boss and so are your colleagues. You will not score any Brownie points for beating them. Especially if you are dead.

The point is that in seriously thick fog, you must think like this: can I stop within the bounds of the wall of fog I see before me? If you don't think you can, SLOW DOWN!

Back On The Road Again

A few months ago my shiny red Beemer decided it didn't want to play any more: it just wouldn't bluddi start. It would start with a jump from another vehicle, but the battery refused to hold a charge. I doubted that the solution would be as simple and cheap as a new battery, and I was right. Cash has been very tight for the last few months - most of what came in went straight back out again for rubbish like office rent, trade licence and apartment rent (all of which ultimately goes to Sheikh Mo, and he obviously needs it more than I do).

But finances improved a few weeks ago and I entrusted the car to the capable hands of the mechanics. They told me it needed a new air flow meter. Wikipedia tells me this is a gadget that measures how much air is whizzing through the engine so it can figure out how much petrol to squirt into it. Must be a wonderful piece of kit because it costs not much short of dhs 4,000. It took a bit over a week to arrive from Germany, and then the garage told me about a few other things that needed attention. I explained that money is not one of my core components, so they re-worked their quote using generic parts. It still adds up to a small fortune, but I guess that's part of the joy of car ownership.

So I collected it this morning, had a minor heart attack at the size of the bill, and then drove it across the road to Tasjeel because the registration had lapsed while it was off the road. Amazingly I had no fines to pay, but I did have to renew the insurance. Even though this was not due until next month, your insurance has to be valid for at least three months for the car to be registered. Don’t ask me why. So, some serious wallet damage, but at least I won't be placing my life at the mercy of overworked, overtired, overstressed, undertrained taxi drivers any more.

Weather

Hold The Front Page!

The UAE is having weather. If you don't live here, you might not think this is a big deal. But the point is, we don't normally have weather, what we have is climate. The climate in the UAE goes like this: in the summer, it's chuffing hot (up to but never officially exceeding 50°C). In the depths of winter, it can get as cold as, ooh, 17°C. You can expect 4-5 days when it will rain, and a few mornings when it is foggy. This 'winter' has been unusual, methinks. We have had a lot of rain. Yesterday we had half an inch of the stuff in about 15 minutes - thunder and lightning too. Today has been overcast all day. We had a massive shamal (sandstorm) about 1 pm, following which the air was full of sand, no wind was blowing, and El Sol was starting to come out. Just now (from 7pm really), we've had another thunderstorm, and about 15 minutes of really heavy rain.

This rain creates all sorts of problems, of course. Drivers in Dubai, who, with the exception of GCC nationals and locals, all come from places where it rains a shitload more than it does here, forget how to drive in wet weather. They continue to tailgate, drive too fast, attempt rapid lane changes, etc, and consequently end up upside down in their crushed motorcars. Fortunately they are not wearing their seatbelts so they are able to escape.

Locals and GCC nationals don't stand a chance. They just don't get enough parctice at driving in rain.

Here in The Gardens we have the added bonus of a bunch of speed bumps that have been installed on the perimeter roads. You do see the odd speed bump around town that has a gap between its ends and the kerb to allow water to drain through. Regrettably, the speedbumps in The Gardens do not have this clever little design feature, and so they act as dams, creating quite large lakes on the road on their uphill sides.

And usually, when rain is expected, the Municipality sends workers out to empty the sand filters that are a component of most of the drains: when they have done this, they usually leave the drain cover up, thereby facilitating the flow of water. I have not seen any of this happen in The Gardens this year (or ever, actually), so guess what: floods down the hill. Roads around Ibn Battuta Maul under six inches of water. The Maul itself still lacks waterproof roofs.

Still, it could be worse, we could be living in Sharjah where they have no road drainage whatsoever. And it's still only 1428.

Middle Finger Crime

The getting-worse-by-the-day Emirates Toady reports on the case of a British gentleman in court for allegedly flashing his middle finger at a local. I couldn't believe this story. Apparently this is the fifth 'middle-finger crime' incident to hit the courts in Dubai this year. People have been jailed and one was even deported for doing something that most people would not give a second thought to.

The Toady explains, for the benefit of us decency-challenged readers: 'Showing the middle finger - a Western gesture of insult and rejection - is considered tantamount to slander in the UAE.' Actually I did not know that. How can it be slander? Slander is a groundless or downright wrong verbal accusation made against someone. If what you said can be proved to be true, then no offence has been committed. In the case of middle-finger-waving, what are they presuming the finger-waver is saying? Something bad, no doubt. But what if it was justified by the actions of the other person? Sadly, the Emirates Toady report is lacking in detail: it states that the accused was asked whether he had any witnesses to support his claim that he was not waving his finger, but merely gesturing at his head to indicate to the other party that thinking about what he was doing would be a good idea. There is no mention of whether the 18-year-old local in his car with tinted windows had any witnesses.

Grrr...what a waste of time and money.

Also in today's Toady, Managing Editor Eudore R Chand makes a bid to take over where KT's Galadari left off. He's written a leader in which he claims that road tolls will make all our lives better. He seriously seems to think that the dhs 4 toll on part of Sheikh Zayed Road and the Garhoud Bridge will actually make a big difference to driving on these roads. Maybe it will, but it will be at the expense of total and utter gridlock on alternative routes like Al Wasl and Beach Roads, Emirates Road and the Maktoum Bridge and Shindagah Tunnel. For those who cannot or will not pay the toll, life will become even more of a nightmare than it already is.

Oops, that wasn't very positive was it? I hope the RTA will think again about this plan: Dubai needs serious alternative public transport infrastructure up and running before using tolls to drive people off the roads.

Road Stuff

The Government Of Dubai is launching an intensive campaign aimed at transforming Dubai from one the world's most dangerous places for road users to one of the safest within five years. Huzzah!

It can't be done, of course, not in five years, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of ambition. Why can't it be done? Well, it's all down to driver education, respect for the law (and other road users) and effective enforcement. And getting drivers to realise that they are in charge of a potentially highly-lethal weapon.

Deporting truck drivers doesn't help - they just get replaced by new truck drivers who have even less clue about the local driving 'culture' than the previous incumbents. But yes, I'd love to see proper driver education - and I'm gonna piss some of you off now by saying: on a par with Western standards. Drivers from most Western countries are able to get a UAE driving licence simply by passing an eye test and paying money. People with licences from other countries have to pass a test. If there was to be a more advanced driving test brought in (and I've seen things in the press that suggest it is in the offing), then those with licences acquired before the new test is brought in will have to undergo extra training and sit the new test. And we need to see an end to the use of wasta in acquiring licences and in dealing with accidents.

The UK ran some brilliant TV campaigns on road safety about 20-30 years ago. One showed a hammer smashing into a peach - guess who won. Another showed what happened to crash test dummies if they were not wearing seat belts.

Gulf News did a survey on seat belt use and attitudes a few weeks ago. One commenter said he never wore a seat belt while travelling in the back seat, because 'the front seat will protect me'. Sorry pal, the front seat has a steel frame and, in a crash at even modest speed, it will smash you to bits. So, seat belts for all, and proper child seats for toddlers. And no exceptions.

Respect other road users. I remember a phrase from the UK Highway Code 'never do anything that would cause another driver to slow down or change direction'. If all drivers here just thought about that every time they made a manouevre, especially entering roads from a side street or changing lanes on a highway, we would see an immediate reduction in the number of accidents.

So that's road safety sorted out.

On to road tolls. Most of the local papers carried a leaked story from the Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) last week. We are to expect an announcement from the RTA concerning the introduction of road tolls from next July on dozens of major roads throughout the Emirate of Dubai. Notwithstanding the fact that I am leaving next July, this is madness. In the absence of a realistic public transport alternative, and the continuing illegality of car-pooling (because it takes revenue away from the taxis), this amounts to nothing more than another tax on motorists. It will have minimal impact on car use. It may force a number of Echo and the Sunnymen to leave, but guess what, they'll be replaced by more of same. It may force people to consider using a minibus service (there are dozens of these that run from Sharjah/Bur Dubai/Karama to TECOM/Jebel Ali). But that's about it.

Maybe the leak was a strategic move by the RTA to see what kind of response it got. If so, and if the RTA are reading this, my response is, don't even think about tolls until you have provided serious, viable alternatives to using cars. That means 2010 really. By then the first phase of the Metro will be operational, you will have figured out how to run a bus service (and this must include bus lanes and dedicated bus roads with the magic bollards featured in my previous post) on time, we'll have some ferries and hovercraft running up and down the coast, and, most importantly, you will have fixed the climate so that people can actually walk to the access points for these facilities without dying of heat stoke. Quite an easy job really. Go for it.

Bollards!

There's been some half-hearted talk of bus lanes in Dubai of late, but of course you then have the problem of how to stop unauthorised vehicles from using these lanes. Manchester in the UK has the answer - retractable bollards.

My car is a bus - really!

Many thanks to Sickboy for finding this gem: it really made my day.

Beware Of Road Surprises

I just drove down Sheikh Zayed Road from Mall of the Emirates to Jebel Ali Village. The traffic slowed to a standstill no less than five times. First, because of an assortment of quilted jacket sleeves was strewn across the road. Second, half a dozen sheets of plywood on the road. Third, a clutch of kitchen cabinet doors, complete with hinges and handles, you guessed it, on the road. Fourth, the aftermath of a small collision: two vehicles, one police car and one ambulance on the hard shoulder. Fifth, on the small roundabout at Junction 6, a water tanker and a van, apparently parked in the middle of the road, leaving almost no space to pass them. Turned out the van had rear-ended the tanker - slight damage to the van, none whatsoever to the tanker, nobody hurt. But the idiot drivers refused to move their vehicles.

Still about four hours till iftar.