Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
For some reason I like driving to borders. When I went to Vietnam with a friend we hired a little moto and rode two up all the way to the Chinese border. The poor engine must have been overheated the whole way. We even got stopped by police for breaking the 80km/r speed limit for motos! Something I'm a little bit proud of but it was only because we were going down hill. No, no fine was issued...
A border is a simple kind off destination I guess and gives the impression one has travelled as far as possible within a particular country. Anyway, the southern Saudi border crossing is only about a 40 minute drive from work in Ahmadi. On Sunday 26/5/13 I spontaneously decided to drive there on the way home. Just like the drive I would later do to the Iraq border crossing and then the other Saudi one further north, the road was flat and there was desert either side the whole way. Just sand everywhere.
One slightly funny but also fairly macabre thing was the parked tow trucks every few kilometres. They seemed to be there in preparation for retrieving cars from crashes and the fact that business owners had seen as most efficient to position them like this just by the highway seemed to point to the high frequency of crashes on this road. During our induction at work we were introduced to defensive driving in Kuwait. There is also a sign on the wall from the health, safety and environment team saying:
DRIVING IN KUWAIT 2012
- 493 deaths (1.3 die each day)
- 206 crashes per day (8.5 crashes per hour)
- 148,000 red lights were run
- 2,990,550 speeding tickets issued
- 86% violators were men, 14% women
- 36% of drivers were Kuwaiti, 33% Bedouin, 23% Indian and 8% others
BRINKMANSHIP
I'm delighted to see the use of a rather wonderful, old sounding word, brinkmanship, in the US Dept of State's comments about driving here. That's the only positive thing to say about the word here though. Let me first describe what it is here and then how it could be reducing highway capacity.
People drive with intense aggression on the inside lanes of Kuwait's highways. Even if you are sitting on the speed limit here, cars routinely speed up behind you, looming in the mirror. They then apply the brakes just at the last moment, staying off your bumper by about a metre. This is at 120km/h. They then wait there, perhaps moving side to side peaking out down ahead of you. This is particularly annoying if it's night and their lights are shining brightly. They do this persistently until you move over. It's really scary when it happens the first few times, it feels like they are going to crash into you. I've kind of become use to it now and just calmly wait until there is space to move over, perhaps on purpose taking a little longer than necessary in an attempt to teach them a lesson ;-)
Usually it is difficult to move lanes as it will involve slowing down significantly to get in the next one and these are usually packed with cars. There is also a marked difference in traffic speed between lanes. The outside lane is filled with cars going between 60-80km/h. The middle lane cars go at about 80-100 and the inside lane cars go by at up to about 160km/h. I have frequently noticed people using their mobile phones in all lanes, even sending text messages. The speed limit is 120 for this highway, but as you can see by this variation in speed, no one cares... even though there are speed cameras constantly operating every 3km or so. I was told that I would only know if I had been fined if I was leaving the country, where I wouldn't be allowed on the plane until they were paid. I have also recently learned that fines have to be cleared before buying another car. So, if leaving the country or a significant, rare purchase is the trigger for having to pay fines, that may explain why people seem to pay so little attention to them. I was also told by a local that fines are not posted out to offenders. Perhaps that is because of another issue here, the postal service is quite unreliable. To think that one might explain traffic problems partly by referring to issues with the postal service!
CONTRIBUTION OF BRINKMANSHIP TO HIGHWAY CONGESTION
What are you likely to do if one of the three lanes of the Highway of Death is contaminated with people driving extraordinarily faster than the speed limit, usually in large SUVs or American muscle cars? What are you likely to do if they consistently confront the inconvenience of your using this lane at a legal speed by doing everything but ram you? It's likely you'll avoid the inside lane, even when it's legal to do so and traffic conditions, such as a slow truck, require it. So, when you go on the 30, 40 or a ring road, you will see more density of traffic in the outside and centre lanes, sometimes with hardly anyone on the inside one save for the occasional speeding V8 Landcruiser or Charger. High beams flashing if anyone obstructs... In this way, the capacity of Kuwait's highways is being reduced. In the case of a 3 lane highway, one could argue that at least part of the time it is in fact a 2.1 lane highway. With officials remarking that the number of cars here is double that of the capacity of the roads, it is a pity that this problem exists. It makes me wonder how many accidents could be avoided if highway congestion decreased due to a reduction in brinkmanship. Perhaps Kuwait would no longer hold the world record for road deaths?
One last point. If they're so keen to categorise by nationality or ethnicity those responsible for accidents, who is most likely to be driving a shiny new powerful Range Rover at 40km over the already high speed limit, threatening everyone with the fear of death if they happen to be in their way? Who's likely to be driving the beaten up old Corolla at the speed limit in the middle lane? A commenter after the Arab Times article above mentioned that newly arrived Eastern expats can be inexperienced, poor drivers. But the implication was that this was the main cause of traffic accidents. At least the statistics above acknowledge locals are at fault a third of the time. Note though that it could be more like 59%25 as Bedouins would have learnt to drive here and hence their skill level is still a reflection of local policies aimed producing good drivers. We can possibly even say the same about Indians in that list. Even if someone is born in Kuwait, but is of non-Kuwaiti parents, they are not allowed to become a citizen. They continue to be called, for example, Indian. Nevertheless, by growing up here, Indian policies for fostering good driving will not explain any of their skill. Hence, the classification by ethicity or nationality is questionable and possibly has a quite unsavoury basis when you think about it.
There should be another category for expats who have specifically received their training outside of Kuwait. I am happy to be a member of this group. I had to complete a number of hours of training and pass two tests. The same for my motorbike license, which included a 1 day course. I have also done a one day hands on defensive driving course - learning essential extra information about driving safely. Frankly this revealed a deficiency in driver training in my county, everyone should have to do this defensive driving course. At no point along the way was there a chance that corruption could reduce the validity of my claim to being a competent driver on account of having been declared to have passed the test. You must be sensing another impending comparison between Kuwait and Cambodia here.
Of course, corruption is the name of the game when it comes to anything traffic or license related in Cabodia. A more thorough comparison between the two countries will come in a future post devoted to the issue, but here it's enough to say that Kuwait, which has the most expensive currency in the world, has similar corruption issues about getting a license as Cambodia, which sits at the bottom of a number of international health, education and economic league tables.
Harsh remarks? Excessively lengthy? Try driving here and you'll find yourself behaving similarly. When you're leading the world in traffic deaths, straightforward language is warranted.
Anyway so I didn't expect this to become a statement about driving in Kuwait but you can probably understand why it did. Traffice is a problem here and whilst spending a year wrangling with Khmer traffic on a moto did prepare me, one really has to be careful. I find that Kuwaitis are sometimes uncomfortable when I draw comparisons with Cambodia. Well, let that shame be a motivation to improve. Cambodia is one of the poorest, most corrupt countries in the world with a truly brutal recent history. With the Iraqi invasion, Kuwaitis have also suffered, but they have tremendous wealth through oil. They confront the lesser difficulty of simply managing their money well, rather than also having to find money. A quite minor proportion of it would resolve a lot of the issue.
On this trip I also went for a drive around Al Khiran. This is an artifical canal area which involves a staged process of creating massive embankments then letting sea water in. It was even on the Discovery Channel! It's a housing development for up to 100,000 people and will cost about 2b. An Australian firm is playing a leading role in constructing it which is great to see.
- comments