Residents of Gulf countries have long known that driving here leaves a lot to be desired. However, despite periodic appeals by local police forces, the region’s motorists have largely carried on in the same old way i.e. driving in a reckless and irresponsible manner.
Now though, the region may just have received the wake-up call it needed. A new report published by the World Health Organisation says that 400,000 young people under the age of 25 are killed worldwide in road traffic accidents every year.
The exact number killed in the Middle East was not available, but the individual country assessments made pretty grim reading for the region. The majority of Arab countries registered a death rate of 15-19.9 individuals per 100,000 amongst people aged under 25. One country, Algeria, was in the highest bracket of 20+ deaths per 100,000 people. Only the smaller states of Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar were in the lowest bracket of -10 deaths per 100,000.
The report cited figures from 2002, presumably the last year for which reliable figures are available. Had the figures been more recent, they well have been much higher. Also, whilst the number of young people killed is terribly high, millions more are injured and left with permanent disability.
With the WHO report fresh in people’s minds, there is no better time to really clamp down on bad driving. According to the report, countries that have enforced measures such as lowering speed limits; cracking down on drink-driving (less of an issue in the Middle East than elsewhere); and enforcing the use of seat-belts, restraints and cycle helmets have seen significant reductions in deaths and injuries.
The problem in Middle Eastern countries is that driving laws are routinely ignored and there are no serious penalties for ignoring them. For example, people might be fined US $40 for breaking the speed limit, but are points ever added to their license for doing so and is anyone’s license ever confiscated from them? Most of the time, it seems that fines are just a way to boost government revenues rather than encourage better driving.
Enforcement of seat-belts laws is incredibly lax and it is doubtful that anyone is ever fined in a regional country for failing to wear one. A very common, and very disturbing, site in the Gulf is children jumping around in the back of a car unrestrained or even sitting on a parent’s knee in the front, without a seatbelt to protect the parent or child. Following the WHO’s report and in light of the increasing number of deaths and injuries on GCC roads, let’s hope that governments really start to enforce road safety rules and punish those who ignore them.
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