It occurs to me that next month I will celebrate one year of living in Doha, which means I will also "celebrate" one year of driving in Doha. The second commemoration seems much more significant than the first, believe me.
Doha roads take all the things that sometimes annoy you about driving (traffic, constant construction, hopelessly inaccurate signs, lax policing, aggressive drivers, new drivers, foreign drivers, and people driving while talking on their cell phones) and throws in some extra tidbits for flavor (unnamed roads that lead to nowhere, pretty frequent dust storms, occasionally impenetrable fog, mind boggling roundabouts, reckless underage drivers, and extreme danger) and serves it up to you on a platter that, for most of the year, is scorchingly hot. Going anywhere means you must brave all this, for there is no way to avoid any of it, even on a very, very good day.
Sure, you may not have to face the fog, which only comes out in the mornings during winter, and you may happily skip the afternoon dust storms depending on your timing, but it is almost impossible to get to virtually any destination without being forced through a roundabout at some point. Believe me, I've tried! I have become the queen of backroads and back ways, all in an ongoing effort to spare myself as many roundabouts as possible, but it's really no use. All the divided roads here mean that sooner or later you will want to turn left, and the only way to do that is to go around a roundabout.
And roundabouts are a microcosm of the worst parts of Doha driving. Often, especially recently, the roundabouts are under construction. Usually that means inadequate, confusing, or just plain false signs. Roundabouts are where the aggressive drivers get positively mean, the new drivers get completely flustered and act erratically, which is almost as dangerous, and the foreign drivers, particularly those used to driving on the other side of the road, just generally contribute to chaos. All of this is not helped by the configuration of my favorite roundabouts, in which three lanes of traffic feed into just two lanes going around. Not that anyone actually recognizes the switch; most people just drive blithely on, forcing three lanes into two or, more often, simply moving into your lane without warning. During high traffic times, policemen appear to "direct" traffic, but often it seems as if they themselves have not driven much when they "direct" you into a near accident or tell cars to stop or go completely arbitrarily.
Today, for example, I was caught in two inexplicable and one explicable traffic jam(s)--the last one was caused by a car that had run into the back of someone else so hard the front of the car was completely crumpled, but the driver was still standing, so that's good. I also saw a woman drive down the middle of a backed up three lane road. As in she moved herself into a space between cars in lane one and lane two and then basically forced her way forward as if she were an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens, straddling the dotted line between the lanes and inching so close to people they felt they had to move so she wouldn't hit them. She was driving a sedan as opposed to the ubiquitous SUVs, so I guess she saw herself as being super maneuverable...? Then another guy passed me on the right...on the sidewalk...going at least 30mph. Because of course he did! And all this was only on the approach to the roundabout! Once we got there and were waiting for the light to change--some actually do have lights, which makes them marginally better than others--another car drove through really fast after the light had changed and he has lost his right of way, but he was laying on his horn really hard to let us all know to get out of his way. Thanks for the warning, buddy!
As I said to a newly minted Doha driver, driving here is always strategic. You never just get in your car and GO! Oh no, you need to plot out your route, either via GPS or mentally, account for new construction, consider the danger of the roundabouts you might face, plan for alternate routes, build in 20 extra minutes for something unexpected, and then maybe reconsider whether you really want to go anywhere at all! And once you're on the road, it's the ultimate defensive driving course where the stakes really are life and death!
Wanna come ride with me??
Doha roads take all the things that sometimes annoy you about driving (traffic, constant construction, hopelessly inaccurate signs, lax policing, aggressive drivers, new drivers, foreign drivers, and people driving while talking on their cell phones) and throws in some extra tidbits for flavor (unnamed roads that lead to nowhere, pretty frequent dust storms, occasionally impenetrable fog, mind boggling roundabouts, reckless underage drivers, and extreme danger) and serves it up to you on a platter that, for most of the year, is scorchingly hot. Going anywhere means you must brave all this, for there is no way to avoid any of it, even on a very, very good day.
Sure, you may not have to face the fog, which only comes out in the mornings during winter, and you may happily skip the afternoon dust storms depending on your timing, but it is almost impossible to get to virtually any destination without being forced through a roundabout at some point. Believe me, I've tried! I have become the queen of backroads and back ways, all in an ongoing effort to spare myself as many roundabouts as possible, but it's really no use. All the divided roads here mean that sooner or later you will want to turn left, and the only way to do that is to go around a roundabout.
And roundabouts are a microcosm of the worst parts of Doha driving. Often, especially recently, the roundabouts are under construction. Usually that means inadequate, confusing, or just plain false signs. Roundabouts are where the aggressive drivers get positively mean, the new drivers get completely flustered and act erratically, which is almost as dangerous, and the foreign drivers, particularly those used to driving on the other side of the road, just generally contribute to chaos. All of this is not helped by the configuration of my favorite roundabouts, in which three lanes of traffic feed into just two lanes going around. Not that anyone actually recognizes the switch; most people just drive blithely on, forcing three lanes into two or, more often, simply moving into your lane without warning. During high traffic times, policemen appear to "direct" traffic, but often it seems as if they themselves have not driven much when they "direct" you into a near accident or tell cars to stop or go completely arbitrarily.
Today, for example, I was caught in two inexplicable and one explicable traffic jam(s)--the last one was caused by a car that had run into the back of someone else so hard the front of the car was completely crumpled, but the driver was still standing, so that's good. I also saw a woman drive down the middle of a backed up three lane road. As in she moved herself into a space between cars in lane one and lane two and then basically forced her way forward as if she were an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens, straddling the dotted line between the lanes and inching so close to people they felt they had to move so she wouldn't hit them. She was driving a sedan as opposed to the ubiquitous SUVs, so I guess she saw herself as being super maneuverable...? Then another guy passed me on the right...on the sidewalk...going at least 30mph. Because of course he did! And all this was only on the approach to the roundabout! Once we got there and were waiting for the light to change--some actually do have lights, which makes them marginally better than others--another car drove through really fast after the light had changed and he has lost his right of way, but he was laying on his horn really hard to let us all know to get out of his way. Thanks for the warning, buddy!
As I said to a newly minted Doha driver, driving here is always strategic. You never just get in your car and GO! Oh no, you need to plot out your route, either via GPS or mentally, account for new construction, consider the danger of the roundabouts you might face, plan for alternate routes, build in 20 extra minutes for something unexpected, and then maybe reconsider whether you really want to go anywhere at all! And once you're on the road, it's the ultimate defensive driving course where the stakes really are life and death!
Wanna come ride with me??
No comments:
Post a Comment