[wtH] Driving In Riyadh

When you drive in KL, Msia, you bitch about the jams and nutcase drivers. You are constantly embroiled and it is amazing that people don't just errupt into a mass amok of road rage at the bottlenecks in Jln Ampang, Jln Sultan Ismail, Jln Tun Razak, SS2, LDP (heck everywhere lah with the crap infra we have these days)...

When you are in Bangkok, Thailand, you bitch about how much worse they are than Msian drivers. Personally I'd say 25% crazier.

When you are in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, you bitch in amazement at the flurry of bikes (well at least back in 2002) and the lack of any coherent organization of traffic. But somehow it works (imagine an ocean with schools of fish just twirling around but not smashing into each other*).
*not that often

When you are in China (all cities) ... hohoho .... you just don't get it as all sorts of vehicles go through red lights, go up into ramps and drive through the pedestrian areas. And if you are crossing a street, remember to pray as the green man just means you look out for traffic more vigorously as now you have to cross the street.

I thought I'd seen it all, but Riyadh traffic takes the cake and is the mother of all traffic craziness. There aren't major jams here. But when you drive, you drive in sheer terror of your life.

No bloody kidding. In just 5 days of driving, I have nearly got owned by a huge assed GMC 4 wheel drives twice, and I saw a guy nearly creamed by a car by just a few inches some weeks before.

Riyadh, as a desert is very spread out and you are forced to travel by car. Forget about walking there is no way that would work. You could try, but you'd probably die of dehydration before you reach the destination (well, if a Saudi car doesn't ram into you in the first place).

Being oil rich, there are many wide roads but the roads here don't have that well tarred gravel feel. In fact, the roads here are quite slippery maybe it is because of the composition of the roads or the sand that coats it permenantly.

And when you get onto the non-highway roads, they are usually wide too but they are riddled with ocassional holes, speed bumps that appear out of nowhere (you get into a mini flying "Dukes of Hazzard" moment). It is rare to find lanes defined by white stripes on the road, in the highways you may have cats eyes, and on the non-highway roads there are non.

As what you hear from people who have been in Saudi, cars are huge and damn cheap. Even after being here for 1 month and speaking to people about their cars (conversations eventually drift there or about work or about sand sports or shopping at Carrefour .... coz you don't have the luxury of talking about the latest movies in town - maybe it has to do with the fact there are no cinemas here).

Oh yeah back to the car prices - even after being here for a while, my jaw still drops when I hear that huge assed gas guzzling cars are sold at a dime. Eventually after the jaw bone goes numb, and when the jaw musces ache, I remember to nudge it back to position. And yes - Proton can go to hell.

When driving in Saudi, you have to practice 3 extremes of driving:
- Defensive driving 100%. It's like being a jet fighter in a dogfight where you have to angle 360 and move you head left and right nonstop to make sure no ghosts are trailing and no crazy missles are heading towards you.
- Faith. This usually happens at roundabouts where you just let go, and let your constant speed be the only constant, and let the Saudi drivers use that constant value to navigate around you. You have a moment of peace admist the danger. It's a bit like Star Wars 4 where Luke's letting The Force come to him before he unleashes the photon canons into the Death Star.
- Crazy Taxi. Tap into you inner Saudi driver, you know its in you, and drive like a maniac!!

What else can you do? It's like the desert folks one day woke up and found their camels were replaced by cars one day, and they just go around as if nothing changed. This translates to driving behavior such as:
- Making u turns everywhere, even when there are no roads, even when they are going against oncoming traffic (I've done that too - I'm becoming a Saudi driver)
- Driving into 1 single point of the road that houses about 6 converging different flows, and making a 70 degree (clockwise) turn then immediately making a 90 degree turn (anti clockwise)
- Skipping the roundabout by simply taking the car off the road, down into the desert sand, then going up a hump of sand, and cutting into the road and going across - instead of waiting for a while to go 12 o'clock at the roundabout
- Going to the roundabout, making a "to hell with incoming traffic" u turn to make a 360 degree turn, instead of going round the roundabout to make a 360 degree turn (think I'll be doing that someday to bring out the Saudi in me)
-More ... lots lots more

And unlike Msia where people beep and horn, then drive parallel to you to curse you, the people here take it as a given that everyone drives like a maniac. Everyone horns each other, steers wildly just in front of each other, cut into the lines and then cut off .. but its OK, coz it's not personal, it's simply cultural :)