JEDDAH, 21 July 2004 — Drivers traveling between Jeddah and Madinah are upset with the highway police giving them traffic violation tickets randomly. The officers claim that the motorists have been exceeding the 120-speed limit; the motorists deny it. The problem is that once the police officer writes the ticket, there is no way to object to it.

“I was driving from Madinah to Jeddah in the middle of the night and was doing exactly 120 kph, the legal speed on this highway,” said Anas A. “Before I reached a rest area on the highway, I saw a police officer standing by the side of the road with his vehicle lights off. He was flagging down a car. I stopped and reversed up to him because I thought that he was in trouble.”

Anas said when he got out of his car, the officer asked for his driving license. “I asked if anything was wrong and he told me he wanted to be sure of my identity.”

He was then asked for his car registration. On producing it, he was surprised to see that the policeman was writing a speeding violation. When asked why, the officer replied that the radar in his car indicated that “I was doing 160 kph. That simply was not true,” said Anas.

It transpired that the police officer could not describe the color of the car because it was 2 in the morning and dark. Furthermore, there was no radar in the police car. It was obvious to Anas that the officer was simply wrong.

Fadel Abdul Wadood related another, even more bizarre, case. He was driving a Toyota Camry on his way to Madinah when he was stopped by the highway police at a checkpoint about 170 km from Madinah. The police officer was pulling over every Camry and holding the driver, his license and car registration.

It seems that traffic police had spotted a Toyota Camry that was speeding and decided to stop the driver at the next checkpoint instead of giving chase pulling the driver over. “There were five Toyota Camrys being held. They had no clue as to which one had been speeding. All of us got a speeding ticket.”

Saud Al-Harbi was another victim. He generously thought that he did not want to give the police a hard time. “Nothing is perfect; there are bad officers as well as good ones.”

All he asks is to have a police court where complaints are taken seriously and for the police officers to give us their names and badge number instead of hiding them.

“We need honest and educated police officers instead of these individuals that want to have fun with drivers just because they are bored.”