A month ago a 19-year-old Saudi college student was killed in Jeddah when her abaya caught in the closing doors of a bus as she got off the vehicle near her home. None of the other women on the bus noticed as the windows were blacked out. Neither did the driver, who drove on dragging the girl behind. Her sister had gone on ahead of her and also failed to notice anything.

When the bus driver eventually spotted the girl in his side mirror, he stopped and carried her home, but she had already sustained multiple head injuries and fractures and, rushed to hospital, lived for only three days in a coma before succumbing to her injuries.

The dead girl’s family, in an extraordinary gesture of forgiveness, waived the blood money. They believe that the driver did not mean to kill the girl and would have been unable to afford the SR100,000 awarded against him. They drew attention to the fact that, as soon as he realized what had happened, the driver carried the girl all the way to her house. “It was fate,” they said, “and we believe in God.”

The police placed the blame for the girl’s tragic death firmly on the bus driver. But similar accidents had previously been reported. A teenage pupil at an expat school died in very similar circumstances, and the parents placed the blame firmly on the driver. However, it was reported that some felt the fact that the girl was wearing an abaya played a part in the accident.

Such accidents raise a number of important considerations. One, and perhaps the most important, is the need for proper safety standards in the Kingdom. That means that such safety standards as do exist should properly be enforced. As Saudi Arabia’s population grows, and grows younger, the old laissez-faire attitude is no longer sufficient.

There can be no doubt that the drivers in these accidents had some responsibility, even a great deal, for the loss of these young lives. But there can equally be no doubt that the circumstances in which they worked and the equipment they operated made it difficult for them to live up to their responsibility.

A second consideration, then, is that we should balance the legitimate claims of our traditions and sensitivities with other, equally important claims: those concerning the safety and sanctity of the lives of our children.

If the blacked-out windows of a school bus serve the function of shielding girls and young women from view, they have the drawback, at the same time, that they make it difficult for the driver to see out. In a country where safe driving is to say the least in its infancy, that could be a recipe for disaster.

By the same token, if the young girls’ voluminous abayas serve the function of covering their bodies, they could, concerned parents feel, have the dangerous disadvantage that they are impractical and can easily get caught. As the most recent case shows, that can have fatal consequences.

There is a need, in other words, to weigh our traditions and beliefs with the important need for proper safety brought about by a rapidly changing world where technology has an ever bigger part to play.