A box of chocolates

I was going to call this entry 'the lost art of indicating' but the above is much better as you'll soon see why - and no, it has nothing to do with Forrest Gump.

Driving in the UAE is like swimming with sharks. The roads are full of minnow chomping SUVs, Hummers and other beasts that move with stealth, speed and ferocity.

Driving the speed limit here (60km on the city roads; 100-120 on the highways) is a health risk; I often glance in my rear view mirror to find some hulking beast looming up on me flashing his lights, I say ‘he’, but women are just as bad, chatting away on their mobile phone as they steer their tinted-window Hummer into incoming traffic, expecting everyone to stop for them – and guess, what, they do.

The penalty for getting into an altercation with an Emirati can be severe. Take for example the colleague who was quite happily sitting in the back seat of a taxi, driven by one of the army of drivers from Peshawar, when an Emirati woman fails to indicate and just pulls out into traffic and into the side of the taxi.

Luckily, no one was hurt, but it is a crime to leave the scene of a traffic accident, no matter how minor, so everyone hung around until the police arrived; the Emirati woman, clad in abaya and sheela (the headscarf) sat chatting on her mobile in her air-conned vehicle, while my friend and the taxi driver tut-tutted at the damage to the taxi and the unsurprisingly unmarked Hummer.

The police arrived, took one look at the scene, pulled out a ticket book and wrote up the taxi driver.

My friend tried to explain to the police that it was not the taxi driver’s fault – to no avail. Then he appealed to the Emirati woman to tell the truth, but was again ignored. The taxi driver just shrugged his shoulders.

There are a couple of reasons that the roads are so perilous here, and seriously they can be quite fatal. Accidents happen every day and not long after I arrived, the country had its biggest car accident – a 300-plus car pile up on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway.

It was poor visibility, and, instead of slowing down, everyone continued to drive at ridiculous speeds …

Roads here are at least 6 lanes wide and it’s almost as though there’s a competition as to how many times you can change lanes - without indicating of course. The only ones who do indicate are either foreigners or bus drivers, and no, the latter is not good as thier style of indication does not mean: 'hey, i'd like to come out,' but 'hey, i'm coming out now, so you better swerve to avoid me.'

Most of the drivers on the road have learned to drive in Pakistan or India where rules are very lax, and probably have faked licenses. No one knows what to do at a roundabout, which for those of us who like to abide by the rules of the road – is very frustrating.

But despite teh atrocious driving here, the worst thing you could possibly do is get angry. Road rage is a serious crime, and if an Emirati is involved, well ….

Here’s a cautionary tale for those of you thinking of visiting:

A friend of a friend was driving to work and checked his rear view mirror to find an SUV on his tail. He was doing 20km over the speed limit, which is quite usual, and was in the middle lane, so after a few miles of the SUV refusing to back off and flashing its lights, this friend stuck his hand out of the window and waved the guy on …

The SUV swerved round my friend and gunning his engine pulled ahead.

My friend thought no more of it and headed off to work, where he was met by his manager and taken down to the police station.

It seems the Emirati in the SUV had taken my friend’s licence plate and filed charges of road rage. Therein followed a heated negotiation between police, the Emirati and my friend’s boss in Arabic, with the only thing my friend could make out as “five months in jail”.

In the end, it was settled as all things are in this country. The Emirati agreed to drop all charges if my friend made a humble apology both in person and in writing, and bought him a box of chocolates.