The 18-year-old Saudi girl got into the driver’s seat and took the wheel from her dad on the Dammam-Alkhobar Expressway. Her father had suddenly started feeling severe pains in his chest while he was driving and lost control of the car. He needed immediate medical attention.

The girl, who was wearing her abaya, drove all the way to the city to get him to the nearest hospital. Her courageous act saved her father’s life.

This is a true story that was published in Al-Watan newspaper last month. The report went on to say that the father had previously taught his daughter how to drive because he believed it to be a necessary skill, even though the Kingdom does not allow women to drive. He said he was impressed to see how his daughter took charge when his health suddenly deteriorated and bravely took the wheel wearing her full veil.

This report gave me some optimism that people here could accept women driving and even realize that it is important. But that optimism did not last long.

I learned a week later that Al-Riyadh newspaper published last month a survey about women driving in Saudi Arabia. The paper closed the survey after 90 percent of the total 33,000 votes turned out to be against.

Some people who support driving for women said that the conservatives were simply better organized, spending time lobbying and rallying their supporters and asking them to go online and vote against the idea.

Others who opposed the idea on some Arabic websites accused Al-Riyadh newspaper of cowardice for stopping the survey when it realized it was going contrary to what it had expected, namely that the supporters of driving for women would carry the day.

Those same people said some Saudis were naïve when they called for the liberation of women and did not see the great corruption that would spread if such a thing was allowed. They said that if women were allowed to drive, soon some of them would take the opportunity discard the hijab and abaya as well. They said in 1991 a group of Saudi women protested against the law banning them from driving and took to the streets in their cars and threw away their abayas and hijabs.

They concluded that if women were allowed to drive it would merely encourage them to leave the house unsupervised for no good reason.

In the 1960s, education for girls was proposed by the government in the face of massive objections from the public and from scholars who said it was contrary to Islam. But this matter is entirely different.

There are in my opinion two main obstacles that hinder women from driving here. The first is the mentality of men, many of whom continue to see women as lesser creatures in terms of intelligence and capability.

The other is the fact that the uncovering of a woman’s face in public is not only a social taboo but is believed by the many to be a sin.

Even if a law permitted women to drive, cultural barriers would kill it instantly. Take the issue of driving licenses. For security reasons there has to be a photo to identify the driver. But how would an officer of the law be able to perform his duty? Would he ask the veiled Saudi woman to uncover her face to identify her at a checkpoint, for example? The small percentage of Saudi women who uncover their faces would not have a problem with that, but what about the majority of Saudis — both male and female — who believe that a woman must never uncover her face to a man, even for security reasons?

To overcome the problem, and to gain public acceptance from the conservative majority here, the government would have to seek a solution of opening women’s sections in the police department or recruit female police officers that would be stationed all over the Kingdom.

None of that is likely any time soon.

Another option is for us to change deeply entrenched beliefs and draw clear distinctions between customs and traditions on the one hand and religion on the other.

And that will take generations to do, provided there are enough Saudis who believe that it should be done at all.

- Arab News Opinion 10 September 2003