A few days ago, the court in Jeddah issued a sentence, which was the first of its kind. The court sentenced a driver to death because, while he was performing acrobatics with his car, he killed three young men and injured two others.
The news item published in one of our local newspapers noted that the condemned driver had 66 traffic violations and that some of them were for dangerous driving.
The report also said that the man was driving his vehicle backward at a very high speed when the accident occurred.
In passing the sentence, the court noted that what the driver had done was contrary to religion because it violated other people’s rights, frightened them and wasted their lives and destroyed their property. Unfortunately, the habit of driving in such a fashion — carelessly and even crazily — is common among our young men. Behaving in such a way is no more than a form of serious moral and ethical corruption. Whether the court will entertain an appeal in this case or not, traffic accidents have become the phobia of Saudi society.
A person dies on the road almost every hour, in addition to the huge number of those injured and paralyzed in traffic accidents.
The problem is worsening despite many studies done to understand the reasons and to try to find ways to deal with the problem and eliminate it.
I was astounded to read that the condemned driver had 66 traffic violations. If he had so many traffic tickets, why had his driving license not been taken away? Why was he still allowed to drive? All international traffic regulations follow similar rules and dictate canceling a driver’s license when a driver has so many violations. If we only implemented the existing traffic rules and regulations, we could have prevented hundreds of accidents and saved thousands of lives. When will we begin doing what is necessary? How long must we wait and how many others must be killed?
