Two-wheeler Schumis

These teenage kids zip around the roads between Wadi Kabir, Ruwi and Muttrah areas in the evenings, and cause a great bit of inconvenience to car drivers. Most of the time, they trespass into the highway and cause a flutter by their helter-skelter riding skills. Not content with highway, they often stay into pavement next to the highway. Call it adrenaline rush or teen passion, they are surely putting their lives at risk. Where are the ROP guys?

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. *

Banning Smoking in Oman!!

Many countries worldwide have gone through banning smoking in public and are within the category of “Smoke Free” Countries. This action came out as a result of the increase of people dying either as first hand smokers or as second hand smokers. Also with the increase of cancer cases that are caused mainly by smoking.

I know that England did add her self to the list of Smoke Free countries from the 1st of July of this year. But I was wondering if Oman going to be within that list or where she ever joins it in the future?

Every year there are more people who smoke in Oman and they are mainly as young as 10-11 years to 40-45 years. Infact I don’t have a solid statistics to support my claim, but this is only done out of observation that I have been observing around me when ever I visit home over the holiday period of time. Also I have noticed that the increase in the smoking population is not only within the male gender but as well as the female and it could be more within the female than male; especially in smoking Shisha!

Am not sure but I guess smoking had become a habit that is wide spread across our Omani community as well as worldwide. Although in many places smoking is treated as a habit that is treated to vanish and yet in our communities is the contrary. Although smoking is an old habit that many were on it for a very long time but was also done in secrecy in many occasions, for one normal reason that it was an unacceptable habit by many but in the current life this habit is more or less taken to be as a trend that is introduced in public places such as in Shisha places, smoking in restaurants and shopping malls and selling cigarettes to under age persons despites that requirements of the International Law against serving to under age persons.

Also with the government allowing such places to provide such services to any of their costumers it allows the increase of smokers’ population in the country despite the health advertisements and information provided by the Ministry of Health in regards to the consequences that can lead by smoking!

Sometimes I doubt that our country will really go through banning smoking in public especially that the National Economic does depend on the import of tobacco and the relevant. Although it is not a direct dependency but it has an impact within the economy, and you can evident that by noticing the wide spread of Shisha Licences within the country and how the Legislation changed in the past 3 years from not allowing any place serving Shisha to every where is allowed to serve Shisha.

Another evidence is the cigarettes prices had dropped down and are cheap to buy them, not that I buy any or smoke any but I was told that it is the case, though am not sure how genuine is this information and if its still valid to this moment! Someone can correct me if I am wrong in this, but I will still base my argument on what I have been told.

So, by dropping the prices of cigarettes it’s another way of encouraging people to buy more of them and again this means more sell and more money in the economy baskets.

Its like what UK had had in their economy baskets, they depend on the selling of various things especially the imported stuff, but their main sell depends on selling cigarettes & tobacco and alcohol. Yet, they managed to extract themselves of the 100% demand on selling tobaccos and find other sources to cover their loss; and that’s for the sake of people’s health and trying to encourage their people to quit smoking and providing them with free services to help them quitting.

AND the question still remains, are we ever to follow other countries in bringing the health foot forward and ban smoking in public or ignore the health foot and bring the economies foot forward and step hard on it for the sake of the investors interests?!

P.S. I’ve typed the above based on knowledge that I’ve been picking up from the surroundings from my visits to Oman and not based on solid statistics or evidence. However, I will be grateful if any one of you has any solid information in regards to this topic that could be of use and benefits to us all and that can enlighten our thoughts.