The air bag: Down Under has plenty over on UAE road culture

The air bag: Australia could teach the UAE a thing or two about road safety.

The long, carefree roads on the Western coast of Australia are a far cry from the often stressful, unpredictable traffic of Dubai. Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

By the time you’re reading this I will be nearing the end of a month-long holiday in Western Australia – a state that makes up about a third of this enormous country’s land mass, yet there are fewer people living here than in Dubai. However, the vast majority of these people are based in and around the city of Perth – itself so remote that it’s closer to Singapore than to Sydney.

For almost the entire time I’ve been here, I’ve been driving on the roads, covering many hundreds of kilometres up and down the spectacular coast. The experience has been more foreign than I ever thought possible and it’s nothing to do with Australia’s unique topography, its staggeringly beautiful and diverse nature or even the fact that everyone drives on the left. No, what has struck me as totally unfamiliar is the fact that I managed to reach every destination without my nerves being frazzled.

No tailgaters, no idiots tearing up the hard shoulder in heavy traffic, no speeding, no drifting from lane to lane, no road rage, no – to coin a phrase – worries. Initially I found the sedate pace rather slow. The speed limit on main roads is 100kph, with the freeways enjoying a 10kph increase. In and around urban areas it is much, much lower and is rigidly enforced by the police wherever you are. Upon spying a couple of Lotus Elises one weekend afternoon as we drove to the bohemian town of Freemantle, I remarked to my wife that I’d be incredibly frustrated in such a focused driving machine while subjected to these draconian anti-speed measures. She felled me with a single comment: “Perhaps it’s time you grew up, love.”

Of course, as usual, she was right. And, over the ensuing days and weeks, I came to realise that constant speed equals constant stress. The last thing I need in my life right now is more stress, so it’s with some level of trepidation that I ponder my return to the UAE’s roads where I know I will be faced with constant insanity, even when there’s a specific government push to reduce accidents and fatalities. Will our roads be death-free by the year 2020? I just can’t imagine it, can you?

According to Australian government statistics, there was a total of 1,303 road fatalities in the country last year (an increase of two per cent over 2011) and Western Australia has the worst record of all five states. My sister-in-law, Rebecca, works as an intensive care nurse at Perth’s main hospital and she reckons that 60 per cent of all admissions are the result of road accidents. What then, does she attribute this to?

“Perth has doubled its population in the past decade,” she says, “and the public transportation network hasn’t kept pace with expansion. So people in outlying areas are more tempted to drink and drive, particularly the youths. They also have access to powerful cars that they’re unable to handle, as insurance premiums aren’t based on experience or driving history [sound familiar?].”

Yet despite this, I saw no evidence of the kind of lunacy we are subjected to every single day in the UAE. And that, when I quizzed locals, has to do with the policing of the roads. Random breath tests are commonplace, as are spot checks for seat-belt wearing. Even in the middle of nowhere, the police will stop you for speeding and come down hard if you’re just 5kph over the limit. Four strikes and you lose all driving privileges for at least six months. And it doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have. The police are everywhere out here – everyone knows it and they drive accordingly. Misbehave on Australian roads and the consequences are dire, so you do as you’re told.

It’s obvious that what we need in the UAE are the same sort of consequences. Fines are mostly ineffective and there’s isn’t enough of a presence on our roads. Change this, make the punishment fit the crime and reduce the rush. It’s high time we woke up, smelled the coffee and realised that the only way to educate our serial road abusers is to make life impossible for them if they step out of line. My wife is right: it’s time we all grew up.

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