Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Ramadan Driving

The trauma of driving on the roads in Ramadan has to be experienced to be believed.

The Middle East already has one of the highest death rates in the world for driving {see wgaw: CAR ACCIDENTS}  but during Ramadan, at the hour before breaking fast, the traffic goes wild. I used to think it was me being paranoid but newspaper articles started to appear about it during 2004 and Arab friends who live in Kuwait now refuse to drive in the half hour before sunset.




Taken from YouTube, music by Amr Diab




Examples 
Here's an article from a local UAE newspaper ARAB NEWS which attempts to explain Ramadan driving:

“People behave like animals. There is nothing that we can do to control traffic before iftar,” said a local police officer in despair. Shaking his head, he summed up the driving in the half hour before iftar.

“In the whole year I have not had a single accident. In Ramadan and particularly before iftar, I had seven accidents in one month last year alone, and one accident so far this Ramadan,” said Rami Abdulaziz, a Lebanese resident. He believed that more were coming. Two days ago, Rami Abdulaziz, a Lebanese resident, saw an old man hit by a speeding car because the driver was in a hurry to get home. The driver, instead of slowing down, accelerated and sounded his horn to clear the way.
“The man saw him too late and there was an accident. It is ridiculous that a man is killed just so the driver can reach the dinner table on time.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's just crazy!