New and Improved Penalties for Driving Like an Ass.
Arabic readers will see in the above photos the latest and greatest driving improvment measures from our beloved ROP.
Following, for the benefit of the non arabic readers, is an appalingly translated summary courtesy of me. Please, if someone could provide a more detailed translation I would be so, so, so, thrilled.
The one on the right is the official report / circular issued by attourney general, from back in November. It kind of highlights some undesirable driving behaviors. Red light runing, cutting in / overtaking on the yellow lane, Drifting or stunts ??? It pretty much says that these offenses are serious, dangerous, and waaaay impolite, reccomending much stronger penalties for offenders.
The one on the left is the follow up decision taken by the Attourney general, (I am pleased to not that it's the first decision of the year!!!) that states that due to the problems and accidents caused buy people driving in an impolite way on the yellow lines and running red lights and Drifting? Racing? Cruising (help?) ? that offenders who are caught doing these things will be put in jail for up to 48 hours and thier car will be taken away until the case comes to prosecution. If the car is borrowed the owner can petition for the release of the car, and the driver has to give his lisence up. I don't see a maditory fine specified anywhere.
Azzam daily carried the article today, you can read it here.
I am especially excited to see that overtaking in the yellow lane is among the offenses. ROP, if you are reading this, you could take away 75% of the vehicles belonging to Ministry employees if you set up a shakedown on ministry street around 14:15 each afternoon.
I hope the ROP agresssively enforces this, with stings, speed traps, and checkpoints. If they can do this with speeding and reckless driving I think it would have an impact on next year's road accident fatalities.
* Updated, thanks to Amjad for the PDF and the link. *
12 comments:
This rumour has been doing rounds for some days now, but, like everything, rumour floats first and official confirmation happens later in this country. So this could be true. It is nice to have a scary list of dont’s…hope ROP does manage to implement some of these in the next few years…not months! Implementation of rules has been a major problem here.
It's not rumors. This is for real. I received an e-mail from a friend a couple of days ago and wanted to post about it here but didn't know how to show the attached files. I received two attached PDF files with the e-mail.
The attached files have exactly those new driving rules you mentioned and it was a public announcement from the attorney general office and signed by the attorney general himself; Sheikh Hussein bin Ali Al-Hilali.
The announcement was signed on the 14th of January, last week.
I forwarded you guys the e-mail. Check the attachments ..
It's been published in today's issue of Azzamn newspaper here.
Shouldn't something like this be published in ALL the daily newspapers? including the English ones? How come only one daily newspaper mentioned it, and one whole week after its issuance?
Hey, Amjad...
Why dont you upload that file to a "sharing" website and then give us the link to it?? Good idea?:)
Thnx
In the PDF circuller I received my e-mail there is nothing mentioned about drinking while driving, I guess thats a criminal act by itself and punished by law. This new law includes crossing red traffic light, overtaking from the right and "taf7ee9 wheelat" (sorry dont know the english translation :S
Guys, I have updated with the photos of the PDF, and proffered my own botched transliteration of the report and the decision. Improvements to the translation would be welcome!
Driving Like an Ass? Or Driving a car that handles like an ass Suburban? I drive a Mustang (Which I love). I don't drive like those idiots with Mustangs. I drive responsibly (ask Amjad =p). But, what if the road was wet and I turn in an intersection hitting the gas normally but because it's a wet road the car skids? Outcome? I get fined by the police and my car gets taken away from me for as long as they want.
What else I got? Every single policeman on the road staring at me. Because I drive a blacklisted car. Every single head turns my direction to look for anything they could fine me on.
I guess the asshole behavior I was mostly referring to is the yellow line cutting, though drag racing and drifting on public streets qualifies as asshole as well.
I know what you mean. I was driving a friend's late 90's mustang a couple of weeks ago, and turning left at the MQ traffic signal accidentally got it sideways. I was pretty embarrased.
One of the consequences of driving a sports car is being steriotyped by the police. It sucks, but a selfish minority ruins the game for the rest of us. I assume that the ROP will exercise judgement on whom they ticket. Like, accidentally getting it sideways on a wet round about could be overlooked if it was a genuine miscalculation.
I love Mustangs, crappy cornering and all. Among other things, We put a Limited Slip Diff on ours and it helped the handling immensely.
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/
Hi..Thanks for the visit in my blog. Yeah, it will really make us nervous for our first job interview but with enough knowledge and being prepare, it will just be as easy as it gets. We have also lot of violators and crazy drivers here in California.
Have a great day!
urka-chika: I don't know about California but here in Texas I have noticed that everyone deliberately respects traffic rules. A stop sign means a STOP sign, period! Even when it's after midnight and ALL the roads are literally empty, and there is a stop SIGN (not traffic light) drivers still FULL stop, check the road and then move on! In Oman, nobody would really care to fully stop at a stop sign during peak times, let alone after midnight...
They can make all the laws in the world and as long as the policemen in Oman aren't actively enforcing them it won't make a difference. It's against the law to run a red light, and yet I see it happen at least two or three times EVERY SINGLE DAY.
The fact is there aren't enough police in Oman and they are over relying on automated camera radars for ticketing speeders. That does nothing to stop people from speeding and all it is is a huge income source for the ROP. If the ROP would put police people at traffic lights stopping and ticketing people who cross red lights with heft fines and even license revocations, people would stop doing it. People in Oman actively break the traffic laws because they never see anything being done about it.
In the US people stop at Stop signs even in the middle of the night, like Amjad says, because you never know when a policeman would pull up and ticket you for not stopping, even in the middle of the night. Tickets equal points on your license, which equal higher insurance premiums in a country where insurance is very very expensive.
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