In the few months I have been driving in the UAE, I have regularly encountered psychopathic tailgaters, hard-of-thinking lane weavers, doddery oafs refusing to budge from the third of four motorway lanes at 50mph, routine refusal to indicate (unless to signal the opposite of what is intended, or after the manoeuvre has been completed) and lunatic boy racers.
One morning, I watched a man licking nonchalantly at his ice cream as he took his 4x4 monster so close to the gold-and-white cab in front that he'd have been hard pressed to fit his wafer between the two bumpers. He wanted, naturally, to get past and wasn't too fussy about how this would be accomplished.
I have yet to see anyone reversing on a roundabout after missing an exit, and no one has gone quite so far as to overtake me by barging past somehow in the same outside lane, though I have the Time Out Guide to Dubai's word for it that both of these things happen, too.
It is all enough to challenge the view I expressed earlier in my stay in Abu Dhabi that while driving standards are sometimes horrendous here, they are probably no worse than in some other countries.
On balance, though not without a struggle, I am holding to this view, and have said as much in my column in The National today.
That is only because I have sufficiently recent experience of the road hogs of England, chauffards of France and - worst of all if my week there was an accurate guide - piratas della strada of Sicily.
The Time Out book points out that the UAE has one of the worst accident death rates in the world, and that this is hardly surprising considering how so many people choose to drive. It suggests that expats or visitors might consider following the example of those who give themselves whatever extra protection a sturdy 4x4 brings.
A Dubai police chief said the other day that parents were often to blame because they were willing to shell out pots of money not only to buy ever more expensive and powerful cars for their sons but to pay their speeding fines, too.
He was talking essentially about Emiratis, but would doubtless agree that it is absurd to pretend that Emiratis can be blamed for all the atrocious driving that occurs here.
With so many different languages and dialects spoken by residents of the country - I am sure I read somewhere that there are 160 - it would probably take a lengthy academic survey to work out exactly which group was responsible for the worst of what we see daily on the roads of the UAE.
The Pakistanis tend to blame the Indians - especially, as I have written elsewhere, when feeling cross about Kashmir or cricket - and lots of people love to point an accusing finger at this or that nationality, often on similarly dubious grounds. Indeed, if it were not so serious a matter, I might succumb to temptation and suggest that thousands of Sicilians must have moved here.
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