Our dangerous roads

Over the past few months I came to the conclusion that the standard of driving in Dubai has improved.

Wrong. It was a false conclusion.

The last two days I've encountered a couple of the things which I haven't come across for a while but used to see on a daily basis, pushing into queues and using the hard shoulder to get to the front.

That made me realise that what's happened to give a false impression of the driving standards is that there are more roads with fewer vehicles on them.

It's not that people have learnt that it's wrong to drive to the front of a queue in the wrong lane and then force their way in. The reality is that there are fewer tailbacks so there isn't the opportunity for them to do it.

The other thing that hasn't changed is speeding, or overspeeding as I'm amused to see it referred to in the media.

On Sheikh Zayed Road when the speed limit was reduced to 100kph I was, and still am, amazed at the large number of drivers who observe the limit.

But inevitably there's a percentage who still weave in and out at high speed, tailgating and light flashing. Fewer than previously according to my observation but still enough to make life dangerous.

I don't see much change in the speed at which buses, trucks and minivans are hurled about the streets either.

There's a problem with speed, too, in residential areas. A major factor is that we have too many divided multi-lane roads (dual carriageways) in residential areas, which the morons take full advantage of. About three weeks ago Chris Saul complained that it was a fact of life in Old Town and we also have it in Dubai Marina. Speed limit is clearly signed as 60kph but between 80 and 100 is the norm.

I don't know whether the crash, death and injury figures are coming down but I'm guessing that I see fewer crashes simply because we have more roads and less congestion.

That brings me on to the World Health Organisation's Global Status Report on Road Safety.

With things changing so rapidly in Dubai the figures are not all that meaningful because they're from 2007. However they do tell us what the situation was then and how we compared with other countries.

A couple of things to add about the report. Countries submitted their own data and they self-rated themselves on law enforcement and that needs to be kept in mind when reading the country profiles.

The report shows that in 2007 our roads were amongst the most dangerous in the world. For deaths on the roads we had 37.1 deaths per 100,000 poulation against a global average of 18.8.

I have to question the UAE's percentage claims on law enforcement because, as I've said many times, that's where we have a problem. Too few traffic police out on the streets and too many people getting away with dangerous driving.

Yet on enforcement of speed laws our police claim 7 out of 10, on enforcing seat belt laws they claim 7 out of 10. I think that sounds very optimistic.

Another interesting point was pedestrian deaths. That's received a lot of coverage with calls for more pedestrian bridges, something that we certainly do need. But is that the answer? If you compare our pedestrian deaths figure with other countries it seems to be a simplistic view of the problem.

I looked at countries which I know or which are relevant to many people living here. Pedestrians account for 28% of our road deaths. Compare that with Singapore, where they drive very much more slowly and have plenty of pedestrian crossings, but their figure is 27%. The UK has 21%, Australia 13%, South Africa 39%, while in the Philippines Metro Manila has a staggering 51%.

(I looked at India too of course, given the big Indian community here, but the figures they gave are too vague, with 'other' and 'unspecified' making up 40% of the the breakdown).

Another section of the UAE country report shows two things which need urgent attention:

While we have a seat belt law it's shown as not applying to all occupants of a vehicle. It should.

We have no child restraints law. We should have.



WHO report is here.