Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Al Wasl Road waterfront villas

Some rain overnight, so suddenly property values along parts of Al Wasl Road could have improved as they were direct waterfront villas at about 9am.



The Al Thanya Street junction was a lot of fun, four lanes of traffic all edged over into the one slightly less wet left-hand lane, then doing the Dubai Dash across to the far right at the last moment to turn right.



Yesterday evening I drove along Al Sufouh Road and Al Wasl Road with the National Day traffic.

That was an interesting little journey.

Lots of drivers obviously in celebratory mood, having lots of fun weaving from lane to lane, overtaking, undertaking, jumping red lights or generally just travelling at way over the speed limits.

I fully expected today's headlines to be 'Carnage On Dubai's Roads' but I've seen no reports of death and destruction. No photographs of burning vehicles, overturned 4x4s, unrecognisable sports cars.

I'm amazed.

The standard of driving even by Dubai standards was appalling.

Then this morning's light rain brought the hazard light morons out in force.

I photographed this one sitting at the lights in a lane which was for straight ahead or left turn. It wasn't raining at this point either. The rest of us had to guess his intentions of course, because all his indicators were flashing in unison.



He turned left.

The one consolation was that he waited until the light turned green.

9 comments:

i*maginate said...

The one consolation was that he waited until the light turned green.'

Hey, hey...not all moronic drivers are men :P

rosh said...

haha!

Seabee said...

That's very true i* but this particular one was.

Alexander said...

Dunno why you're complaining. At least the hazards paint a true picture of the driver's intention (I could go left, I could go right, I could go straight).

The other day I was behind a lorry indicating left as he gracefully turned right!

Anonymous said...

I was just in Deira City Centre an hour ago... it rained buckets for about 15min, and once again, like last year's winter floods, this was enough to cause havoc: the ceiling lights in the mall's foodcourt turned into waterfalls. Mall management was running around, frantically shutting off the electricity. The manhole covers in the car park were spewing water, flooding everything. After last year's chaos, once again nobody thought that maybe, just MAYBE, this year it might rain heavily again? I'd be interested to hear what's happening in the new, underground metro stations... Typical.

hemlock said...

seabee, i live on the streets youve photographed. hehe... fortunately for me, i was out of dubai in the last two days (any chance to get out) so i missed the lakeviews...=) dont regret it one bit. (though am afraid to go home now, it's been raining all day)

LDU said...

Does it flood over their because of a poor drain system?

Seabee said...

LDU back in August I said "And here's a prediction. Next time it rains we're going to have flooded roads. People will complain about the drainage, but when throughout the dry months the sand is swept into the drains guess what...they get blocked."

I posted a photo too, you can see the problem here.

There is a drainage system but it gets clogged with sand, and other rubbish, during the eleven months when it doesn't rain. There are also unfinished drainage systems in development areas.

Anonymous said...

No problems in Abu Dhabi with the rain - much better drainage system, much better road system (with lots of alternate routes)