Decree Number 19 for 2007 from the Emir brought in new traffic laws in Qatar on October 2. There are now real, written rules about what you can and can't do on the roads. There has been a lot of concern about the extremely high accident rate and it is hoped that the laws will address this. Here's a link to the actual laws and the penalties. My favourite traffic violation is rule number 46: "Getting busy with watching a TV inside the vehicle while driving".
It's an improvement on the previous situation. One of our friends, Ross, has been here for the last few months starting up a waste disposal business. They will need lots of trucks and truck drivers and six months ago he went in search of the road rules for Qatar. Ross tells this story. Nobody could give him a list of the road rules for Qatar and eventually he was sent to the place where truck drivers have to sit their Qatari truck driver licence. He stood beside one of the officials as the prospective truck drivers went through their paces and asked him if there was a set of printed rules he could have to give his drivers.
"There are none", Ross was told.
"Well, how do you know if the drivers you are testing are safe?" Ross asked.
"If they don't hit me or anyone else during the test, they are safe", was the reply.
Just at that moment a truck approached at speed and screeched to a halt inches away from the official with three squashed traffic cones being dragged along underneath.
"Pass!" said the official.
The new road rules must be pretty powerful. Two days after they came in there was an article in the Gulf Times quoting a marvellous statistic. 90% of all drivers were now obeying the new rules. We reckon on that day the 10% of disobedient drivers must have been driving around us in a tight formation.
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