I’ve just returned from a week’s break in Lebanon and, boy, are the roads in Dubai orderly by comparison! I can only admire the restraint of the Lebanese drivers on the roads of the UAE when I see the style of roadcraft that they have come from.
Having also driven across India in an auto rickshaw, I can say the same about the Indian expat drivers as well.
In both countries (as well as many others from where the expat population of the UAE comes) lane discipline is a notion that’s understood to about the same degree as nuclear fusion. In all fairness road markings don’t exist half the time – especially those dividing the two opposing carriage ways, and using the term ‘speed limit’ will either be met with laughter or a look of bemusement, as if you’ve just asked a complete stranger to lend you their mother.
Indicators only exist for … actually no-one really knows or cares why they exist. And the car horn means everything from ‘coming through whether you like it or not’, ‘get out of the way’ and ‘yoohoo!’ to ‘hello ladies’, ‘want a taxi?’ and ‘what are you doing? So what if the lights are red! Go, you fool!’
I can’t imagine that driving in Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Syria, Yemen, Kuwait or Egypt (I’ve seen the youtube videos) is that much different, so the fact that about 70% of the UAE’s population consists of Arab or South Asian expats ought to mean total chaos on our roads.
But it doesn’t. Far from it, in fact. If you take the number of outrageously stupid driving examples that you see on a daily basis – and by that I mean maneouvres likely to cause a serious accident – and compare that to the total amount of time of your journey, it will be a very small percentage.
On my daily commute, most of the time the worst I see is people just driving far too close to each other. You’ll see the occasional fool swerving across five lanes and back only to succeed in overtaking one other vehicle and put themselves 10 metres further down the road than they would have been, but most drivers stick to their lane, don’t speed excessively, and frequently indicate (even if it is just a peremptory ‘blip’ of the flasher).
However, there is one distinct difference between the driving styles I see here and in Lebanon and India. Here there is far more aggression. While chaos seems to reign on the streets of Beirut and Hyderabad, there is also an understanding and an acceptance that it’s just the way it is: ‘This guy is going to try and pull out in front of me, so I’ll let him because I’m going to pull in front of that guy over there’.
In Dubai, however, the attitude is completely different: ‘That guy has a legitimate right, plenty of space and he’s indicating to pull into the gap between me and the vehicle in front, but I’m going to speed up so he can’t. Oooh, that power rush feels so good!’
Where this immature attitude comes from and why it is so prevalent here is a mystery. Maybe it is an example of the intolerance we still have to other cultures and just how far we have to go to truly accept each other. Or it could be paranoia that if you let that vehicle out in front of you it will become the bane of you journey. Who knows. But it shows a fundamental lack of understanding and community spirit, and whether people like it or not, we are a community – a melting pot of cultures, as everyone likes to quote.
So what we need in our stew here is a blend of the general standard of driving that already exists on our roads with the cooperation that you find in more chaotic countries. Would it really that difficult to show some courtesy to other drivers, especially if it helps to make our roads and journeys safer?
i read about a terminology for this road behavior; its called Road Racism!
while most people wouldn’t mind moving off the lane if they see a flashing Bentley come up from rear, the treatment to a Nissan Sunny would be complete ignorance of its existence.