It doesn’t matter where one lives — unless it happens to be on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra where donkeys are the only form of transport allowed to carry sweaty overweight tourists up steep slopes to their whitewashed hostelries — there is bound to be an automobile debate.
In the Kingdom, women are clamoring to rid themselves of drivers and get behind the wheel like their sisters everywhere else in the world, and who can blame them? This is the only country where mothers itch to drop little Ahmed or Suhaila outside the school gates yet find themselves embroiled in cultural/traditional discussions, not to mention the mutterings of macho control freaks.
From a civil liberties/emancipation standpoint, I’m rooting for them but, sadly, by the time the brakes are released, driving will be more of a frustrating chore and less of the refined pleasure envisaged by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, who tooted around along countryside lanes doffing their hats at awe-stricken ladies in horse-drawn carriages. Those erstwhile gentlemen must be turning in their graves at the results of their handiwork.
In Thailand’s capital Bangkok those with lunch appointments often end up arriving in time for dinner, which means commuters in a hurry are often forced to hop on the back of a motorbike “taxi” and risk having their legs severed at the knee. There, the exhaust fumes are so lethal that traffic policemen take advantage of strategically placed booths where they can get a hit of cleansing oxygen and travelers can now avail themselves of oxygen cafes.
In Dubai, letters to the editor of local newspapers center around traffic jams, a lack of parking spaces and wannabe Grand Prix drivers who think traffic lights are street décor and Zebra crossings reserved for striped four-legged creatures. I can still remember the days when camels, goats and chickens wandered around the beach road virtually unscathed, and just in case you rate me with Methuselah that was only 20 years ago!! Things have become so desperate there that “red light jumpers” now face up to six months in prison and a 3,000-dirham fine.
This doesn’t mean to say that Dubai has the dubious honor of hosting the world’s worst drivers. According to Charles May, who spent nine months in a Land Rover en route from the UK to Australia, the “absolute worse” are the Iranians, followed by the Indians and the Greeks.
The trick to successful driving in India, he says, is to get one’s vehicle fitted with the biggest and loudest horn, although he does concede the acquisition “won’t achieve a great deal, since all the noise from bands, camels, people etc. will drown it out”, adding, “but at least you will be trying” (noisy camels?). So this is why Indian trucks are fitted with “Honk please” tail plates! Pakistan doesn’t escape May’s censure either. He warns drivers to stay indoors at night or risk being blinded by powerful headlights.
Judging by a 2003 International Road Traffic and Database report on fatalities per every 100,000 of first world populations, Greece comes off the worst with Norway and Britain the best behaved.
So delighted is the British government at the driving decorum of its circumspect public it is planning a delightful reward. British drivers may soon have the pleasure of paying the equivalent of more than $2 per mile just to drive their own vehicle on their nation’s roads. Don’t bother reaching for your specs. This is correct. Sure, there are plans to discontinue road tax and reduce taxation at the pumps but, even so, the driver of a car going at 70 miles per hour at peak times down a busy highway could end up with a bill of over $140 per hour plus petrol costs.
The government hopes this brilliant “pay as you go” scheme will reduce road congestion. It no doubt will, but what about the skies? Britons may soon conclude a weekend flight to the Spanish Costas will work out cheaper than hitting the road to homegrown coastal resorts, while long-suffering commuters, whose homes are often hours away from their workplaces due to exorbitant inner city house prices, will be forced onto the country’s unreliable and expensive trains.
But there is much more than cost and convenience to this debate and that is the question of privacy. If the scheme proceeds to fruition, all cars on British road will be fitted with tracking devices so at any given time the government will know where drivers are down to the meter and, naturally, drivers will be made to pay for the Big Brother privilege. Given there are up to five million CC-TV cameras already monitoring British citizens then the idea of real freedom for the individual is fast becoming a quaint concept.
As Ted Koppel writes in the June 6 edition of New York Times, the US could be going down a similar road with motorists being lured to sign up to vehicle tracking and assistance companies, which use wireless technology. Koppel also points out that the State Department plans to use “radio frequency technology in all new passports by the end of 2005”, which privacy advocates fear could be used by terrorists to track down American citizens in a crowd.
After mowing down a couple of standing golf clubs lights, running out of expletives when faced with a seemingly deaf Range Rover driver who backed into my brand new sports car despite my frantic use of the horn, and sick to death of face-offs over ever dwindling parking spots, I waved goodbye to my driving days some years ago.
Cairo’s taxis may not be the cleanest on earth or their drivers the most proficient but by golly they’re cheap, plentiful and get me from A to B... well, most of the time...and what’s more, the rides invariably come with music, political discussions and jokes. And so for me it’s cheerio to road tax, insurance, maintenance costs, parking meters, highway tolls and high blood pressure and I can go where I like without being tracked like a lost chip-fitted pet. Sheer bliss!
It seems to be that Saudi woman are faced with a double whammy. Not only are they deprived of the driving experience, they don’t get to taste the infinitely greater joy of packing it in. On second thoughts, though, that sounds too cynical. There are still places where the driver is king and where the lure of the open road beckons. If only I knew where they were.
