Seeking a short-cut on the journey to road safety

To really make inroads into road safety, Brett Debritz says there has to be zero-tolerance on infringers.

Taxi drivers need to obey road rules, just like all other drivers. Nicole Hill / The National

A few nights ago, a friend in Dubai live-tweeted the taxi ride from hell. As she described it, she was in genuine fear of her life as her driver broke just about every rule of the road and then attempted to break some of the laws of physics.

I was concerned for her, but not surprised at the situation. The standard of driving across the UAE is poor, and it isn’t restricted to taxi drivers. However, given that they are professional drivers who spend long hours on our roads, it is fair that they be held to a higher standard than the average motorist.

Everybody I know has their own horror story of a crash, near miss or white-knuckle ride in a taxi.

I was once in a taxi that was cut off in traffic by another cab. My driver cursed, then stepped on the accelerator and chased the offender up the street – a major Abu Dhabi thoroughfare at a busy time of night. When the other cab driver pulled over to let off his passenger, my driver stopped dead in the traffic, wound down the window on my side of the car and shouted driving advice at him.

He appeared oblivious to the fact that by stopping where he had, as suddenly as he had, to lecture the other driver, he had created a potentially dangerous situation for other road users. And for me.

If taxi drivers are required to undergo a higher standard of training than normal motorists, I have yet to see any evidence of it. What I do see is cabbies talking on their mobile phones while tailgating, weaving through traffic without indicating, speeding and failing to obey stop signs and signals. Often they do all this during the same journey.

Then I look around and see much the same behaviour by other drivers. To me, the most dangerous, and yet-all-too common, behaviour is allowing children to move around inside a car travelling at speed. Surely the parents cannot be oblivious to the consequences if the vehicle is in an accident or has to stop suddenly.

Bad driving is not restricted to any particular nationality or segment of society. I see it among strangers and friends in cars of all models and price ranges.

I once asked an acquaintance who had given me a lift why he didn’t indicate when changing lanes. He told me that he couldn’t see why he should bother to do so when nobody else did. I asked him whether he would indicate if he were driving back in Britain, and he admitted that he would. Why? Because he was afraid of being caught and accumulating black points towards a licence suspension. He said he simply didn’t have that concern here.

In other words, he drove in a sloppy fashion simply because he believed he could get away with it.

Having lost two school friends to car accidents, I have an emotional stake in the issue of road safety. It upsets and confounds me that attitudes to the issue of road safety are so casual.

A World Health Organisation report for 2015 estimates the fatality rate on UAE roads as 10.9 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the rate in the United Kingdom – where targeted road-safety campaigns and stringent policing have been a feature of life for many decades – is 2.9. Germany’s rate is 4.3, Australia’s 5.4 and Canada’s 6.0.

To be fair, the rate here has been trending down, but there is a long way to go until it is on a par with most countries in the developed world – the United States being an exception, with a rate of 10.6 – let alone at the stated target of zero deaths.

If we are serious about saving lives, then we have to be serious about educating drivers and enforcing the road rules. And that has to be done without fear or favour. I am disturbed by the fact that one of my friends was fined Dh400 for a driving offence while another one was given a tame verbal warning for exactly the same misdemeanour. That is not good enough.

There must be zero tolerance of bad driving, and we all have a role to play in making that happen. The authorities who can take away drivers’ licences and impound their cars need to be more proactive in doing so. And the rest of us can initiate discussions within our peer groups with the aim of making dangerous driving socially unacceptable.

We can, and we should, call out our friends – and our taxi drivers – when they break the rules of the road. Lives depend on it.

On Twitter: @debritz