DHAHRAN, 23 May 2004 — Abdulaziz S. Al-Amoudi buckles his seat belt as he begins his driving test. He reminds the instructor to buckle his as well. If he doesn’t, he’ll be marked down. He checks the mirrors and adjusts the seat before he turns the engine on, releases the emergency brake and puts the vehicle into gear to head out for his road test.

Al-Amoudi isn’t a teenager. He’s a 48-year-old contract adviser for Saudi Aramco, and the driving test is the culmination of a defensive driving course each employee who drives company vehicles must take and pass every three years.

It may seem odd to make a veteran driver with more than 25 years experience behind the wheel take a refresher course, but there is a good reason.

Of all the activities Saudi Aramco employees undertake, from working at gas plants and refineries to riding helicopters out to jobs on offshore rigs, driving is the most dangerous.

Saudi Arabia’s highways are among the most dangerous in the world. Between 2001 and 2002, more than 4,000 people were killed and tens of thousands injured in about 220,000 accidents on Saudi Arabian roads.

Part of the problem may be the Kingdom’s diverse work force. “There are a lot of people from different countries, some change lanes without signaling or zigzag through traffic. It can be pretty wild,” said Elias A. Issa, a senior trainer with more than 20 years experience in Saudi Aramco’s driver training program.

Each year, motor vehicle accidents claim more lives of Saudi Aramco employees and their dependents than all the other industrial activities combined, and the company is trying to do something about it.

“What we offer here is called the Professional Defensive Driving course. It’s not really basic driving; it’s a very advanced course,” said Issa. “We teach drivers to watch out for the other guy, watch out for his distance and reaction time. We show them all the techniques, not just how to drive.”

Employees arrive at the daylong course early in the morning. Instructors use lectures, visual aids and films to introduce a variety of techniques.

“All of the people who come here have already passed their tests and have licenses,” said Hassan A. Al-Jaffar, also a Saudi Aramco trainer with more than two decades of experience. “But some of them don’t know any defensive driving techniques. We teach them how to avoid accidents. We even teach them how to report accidents. Our objective here is to reduce the number of accidents and save lives.”

Saudi Aramco’s efforts are ongoing throughout the Kingdom to reduce the number of accidents. In addition to the defensive driving classes, the company also works closely with the public schools and the traffic police to reverse those trends.

“Through the company’s outreach, we recently created a course called the Driver Awareness Program, and we’re taking it into government schools now,” Issa said.

The program is a different way for the students to look at driving.

“They see something they haven’t seen before,” Issa said. “It’s exactly the same information we teach in our courses but presented in a different way. We show them accidents and show them pictures and talk about it in a professional way.”

Demand for the classes is high, but Saudi Aramco managers are happy to send the trainers out. “My instructors are booked up until December now,” Issa said. “The traffic police are requesting our instructors to go with them to different schools. From the feedback and the letters of appreciation we receive, it seems to be a very positive program.”

The company also works with the government to identify dangerous roads and make them safer. Company officials in Udailiyah are seeking improvements to the Haradh Road. In 2002, five Saudi Aramco employees and apprentices died on that highway.

“I think the problem is twofold,” said Abdallah S. Jum’ah, Saudi Aramco’s president and CEO. “One is the attitude of the individual himself — how he respects the safety rules, speed limits and so on. Because we can’t always change the attitude of the individual, there is a need for us to show them what the consequences are. There is no end to this. This is a big problem for us because we want to protect our people.”

And for Al-Amoudi, the refresher class was a welcomed chance to hone his driving skills.