It comes as no surprise that the more than 500,000 auto accidents in Saudi Arabia costs about SR20 billion annually and that 30 percent of the patients in Saudi hospitals are treated for injuries caused by traffic accidents.
This writer has written about the Kingdom’s poor traffic safety record before, but has anything really changed in the past decade to curb drivers’ stupidity? Not much, even though the traffic police have made much progress in enforcement. Still, drivers throughout the country behave as if they are entitled to do anything they want behind the wheel.
Before I get to those enforcement improvements, let us address a solution that the president of the University of Dammam has proposed and has been reported in this newspaper.
University President Abdullah Al-Rubaish suggested that an award program be launched to identify and honor the ideal driver in the Eastern Province as part of an awareness campaign to promote traffic safety.
Most of us appreciate the idea that we need to educate drivers to keep the roads safe, but an award program is not going to teach drivers who behave stupidly to suddenly become less of an idiot.
Saudi Arabia has extensively promoted its seatbelt and cellphone use laws while driving with little success. On the road between Makkah and Jeddah, there are numerous signs reminding drivers to wear seatbelts and not use their mobiles while behind the wheel. Either commuters between the two cities can’t read Arabic or English or understand what a red circle with a red slash through it means, or they just don’t care. Clearly, it’s the latter.
My own brother, whom I love dearly, carefully places his toddler son in a child car seat. But he has been ticketed for failing to use a seatbelt for himself or have my sister-in-law wear a seatbelt. My other brother in Madinah says (almost tongue-in-cheek) that wearing seatbelts is some western conspiracy to keep Saudis pinned down.
Short of auto manufacturers disabling ignitions until all seatbelts are locked in, there are many people who just don’t seem to care whether their kids fly out of their mother’s arms and through the windshield if they rear-end somebody.
The only successful way to reduce the half-million auto accidents each year is a zero-tolerance enforcement policy. Saher has changed driving habits in urban areas because the fines are so high. Speed cameras along highways have done a remarkable job to help reduce the number of speeders on the road. And I actually see traffic cops handing out citations.
But three problems remain: First, drivers seem to think that driving on the left and right shoulders are actually driving lanes. There has been little effort to stop these bad drivers who flash their brights at motorists and then squeeze between the center divider and the car they are attempting to pass within just a few inches. Second, construction zones are poorly marked and set up. A drive on the Haramain Highway in Jeddah is to experience unmitigated terror with its useless marked lanes that disappear into barriers and cross over each other and offer little warning that the lane disappears altogether. Third is all drivers in Saudi Arabia follow a “me first” philosophy behind the wheel and who drive aggressively to prove their masculinity. Unlike in the civilized world, drivers here display zero courtesy to fellow motorists.
Traffic police need to beef up their presence on the roads. Only heavy enforcement will curtail the dangerous practices. This will help increase traffic safety for drivers now on the road. But to solve the problem of drivers with a “me first” attitude, the traffic department must implement rigorous driving tests, both written and behind the wheel, to weed out poor drivers and to educate new drivers and those obtaining driver license renewals about the rules of the road.
There is a place for awareness campaigns, but the real solution to reducing the carnage on the road is tough enforcement and teaching motorists driving etiquette.
