The recklessness of some Saudi drivers never ceases to amaze me. Now I can add to my list of the scofflaws, drivers who are members of my own family.

Anyone who has read my columns on these pages knows that I kind of have a thing about road safety or the lack thereof, and the guys who think nothing of putting everyone in peril to gain a few minutes to reach their destination.

My sense of outrage was ratcheted up the other night during a road trip between Jeddah and Madinah. Visiting my family in Madinah for Eid, we left Wednesday night for the trip home. About 175 kilometers south of Madinah we ran into a traffic accident in the southbound lanes involving two big rigs that lost their loads on the highway. All lanes were blocked and traffic was backed up for miles. Nothing was moving.

As we sat in traffic sandwiched between a honking taxi (as if that would get traffic moving) on our left and a tractor-trailer rig on our right, we observed the dumbness of Saudi and expat drivers unfolding in spectacular fashion.

Typically, they took to the left unpaved shoulder and raced down the center median hoping to bypass the wreck. These guys soon ran into other dumb guys who were stopped dead in their tracks by blocked traffic also on the median. So they jumped the concrete curb and drove down the shoulder of the northbound lanes, putting everyone traveling north to Madinah in danger.

Soon the cops came and put an end to this nonsense, but the center median was just as blocked by motorists as all the southbound lanes. We sat in traffic for about an hour until one lane was cleared and we inched our way along until we passed the wreck and it was back to business as usual. There was one small measure of satisfaction as I watched the drivers parked on the dirt shoulder still sitting there because they couldn’t get back on the highway.

All of this is pretty much par for the course in Saudi Arabia, but the larger picture here is that motorists, especially Saudis I am sorry to say, do these things more in a demonstration of contempt for their government than wanting to save a few minutes off their commute.

As often the case when all the guys in my family get together for the holidays, conversation often turns to cars and driving. We whine about the dangerous driving. But then one relative mentioned that he received a citation for driving 131 kilometers per hour on the highway. He was outraged, simply outraged, that he was ticketed for speeding “1 km over the speed limit.” When I pointed out the speed limit was 120 km, he said we (he means men) are allowed 10 km over the speed limit before we are in violation. In his mind the speed limit was 130 km, no matter what the posted sign says.

So, in the wisdom of Saudi drivers everywhere, he vowed to take revenge by placing white tape over some letters on his license plate so the speed cameras can’t identify his car. When I expressed my disappointment that he was a cheater who had no respect for the law, another male relative jumped in and said altering license plates was appropriate to prevent Saher company “from taking our money.” Sigh.

The key to preventing the Saher company from taking your money is to observe the posted speed limit. That point was lost entirely on my relative. What I learned from my experience on the road between Jeddah and Madinah and my conversations with the guys in my family is the deep contempt many people feel for a government attempting to protect them for their own stupid behavior.

While 120 kph seems a little low on open desert highways compared to other countries, Saudi traffic officials are well aware that if they gave an inch to the average Saudi driver they would take a mile and kill a few people along the way. That’s why it’s so difficult to make a left turn or a U-turn in Jeddah. Traffic authorities know that Saudis turning left under any circumstances is a recipe for death and destruction since no one understands the concept of yielding the right of way to oncoming traffic. That’s why so many left-hand turn pockets are blocked with cement barriers.

The motives for motorists behaving poorly has less to do with getting some place faster and more with their sense of entitlement to do as they please. Their attitude is that the Saudi government isn’t going to push them around so the best response is deceiving Saher to deprive the government of revenue.