JEDDAH, 13 August 2003 — Bureaucracy, fines and solo operators are beginning seriously to affect the operations of the road transport industry in the Kingdom.
Established companies that abide by the strict regulations and requirements of the Traffic Department find that inroads are made into their market by “one-truck” companies that cut corners, economize on safety and are unreliable. What they offer is a discount, usually around 20 percent.
The operations manager of a long established transport company in Jeddah spoke to Arab News on the condition of anonymity. “Some of the rolling wrecks that compete for business and are driven by local drivers are moving disasters,” he said. “Rarely if ever are they serviced, their tires are often worn through to the metal, they have no insurance and are frequently overloaded.”
At one location to the south of Jeddah, he pointed out an articulated truck matching the description. On the back were three marble blocks. “That truck is designed to carry thirty tons,” he said. “Those blocks are twenty tons each.”
The transport company runs one of the eight or so overnight services to Riyadh from Jeddah as part of its standard operation. The 1,000-kilometer trip takes 12 hours. “If you do the sums,” the manager said, “it’s not possible to do the trip and keep within the legal speed limit. On desert stretches, it needs to be raised.”
He agreed that many of the tucks that compete for this service were in such poor condition that it would be dangerous to travel even at the maximum permitted speed. “That’s why there should be much more rigid enforcement of vehicle safety,” he said. There is a requirement for a six-monthly vehicle inspection. Legitimate transport companies observe this and keep vehicles in good condition — but it adds to the running expenses.
Producing a clutch of traffic tickets, he observed: “Odd how these all seem to have been issued in the last ten days of the wage month.” One was for speeding. “The vehicle in question was loaded with 25 tons and going up the Riyadh escarpment,” he said. “There isn’t a vehicle built that could travel up that slope loaded with 30 or so tons at over a 100 kph. You’d be lucky to do 30.”
Recently, new legislation required that only Saudis drive heavy goods vehicles. “We tested a large number of applicants and employed four,” he said. “Within a couple of months, three of them had written off the trucks purely through bad driving — no other vehicle was involved — and the fourth habitually turned up smelling of alcohol. When asked, he admitted to needing it before he drove.”
Poor driving is a major factor generally in road accidents. A Chamber of Commerce study showed that the reckless driving of heavy vehicles causes more than 60 percent of accidents on highways. There were over 280,000 accidents alone in 2000 — an average of 460 a day involving heavy vehicles.
A far more serious aspect of the “cowboy” drivers is drug abuse, which has become an integral part of the drivers’ culture here. The main reason for using drugs is that drivers need to stay awake to meet near-impossible deadlines. An upper called Captagon — a version of metamphetamine or speed — has become as easily available and widely consumed at truck stops as tea and sandwiches. The result is that truckers are both speeding and “speeding”, a truly lethal combination.
“It costs SR25 per tablet, and drivers like to take it while sipping strong, black tea,” explained Bule Ahmed, a driver with 24 years driving experience in the Kingdom. “They take half a tablet at a time and it can keep them high without sleep for as long as 48 hours. The trouble is that the more they take, the more they need, and they get addicted to it. I’ve heard many stories about drivers who, because they weren’t able to afford a tablet one day, have suddenly collapsed at the wheel. “Speeding”, combined with reckless driving, is one of the main causes of road accidents. “Our main enemy is speeding,” Bule said passionately, referring to the foot-on-the-accelerator type. “That is true for every driver.”
The test for driving a heavy goods vehicle in the Kingdom is rudimentary, the manager said. Driving a heavy lorry that articulates is very different from a car or a rigid truck. “The official training is simply not enough — if indeed it exists,” he said. The centers certainly do not provide any on-the-road training.
“To have a safe and reliable road transport system there needs to be tough driving training and testing, rigorous vehicle inspection and maintenance and thorough enforcement of the rules,” he said. “The ‘cowboy’ operators may offer a discount, but they are frankly a danger to every road user, and as they are uninsured, their customers’ cargo is a total loss if and when they crash.”
