A while back I did a DOs and DON'Ts of car rental in Saudi Arabia. Here's something else you might want to read in regards to driving in our beloved Kingdom...
The motorways in Saudi Arabia are of fairly high quality. They're repaved every few years. Being that tar is the last and final product to be made from crude oil, we have plenty of it to pave the roads. The problems though, come with the many other obstacles on the road:
Firstly, the drivers... Many Saudis who cannot find regular salary jobs turn to taxying. Each taxi can hold four to six passengers depending on the size. Each Passenger pays about 50 Saudi Riyals to take the trip from Madinah to Makkah. So if the taxy driver takes the least amount of people, he makes about 150+ Saudi Riyals after the cost of gasoline and other small costs.
Therefore, if the taxy driver just makes one round trip to and from Makkah, he rakes in an easy 300+ Saudi Riyals. The drive is about four hours long, as Makkah is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, that is of course, if the driver is driving at the speed limit of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour. That's like working an eight hour shift at work, so it should be enough. Especially, if you're doing it five days a week, that's 6,000+ Saudi Riyals of pure profit. But unfortunately, man's nature is that of wanting more. So Mr. Bedouin Taximan might decide to drive at the average taxi speed of 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour so that he can make two round trips which take two and a half to three hours each way.
This of course means Mr. Bedouin Taximan will be pretty tired since he's been driving so long, and will be in a hurry to get back, and some of these guys reach speeds of 180 kilometers (112.5 miles) per hour easily, without even flinching. I don't think I need to explain why there are so many accidents anymore, do I?
Secondly, the debris... The motorways in Saudi Arabia are generally in the middle of the desert. That means almost anything can end up on the road, whether it's inanimate like a shredded tire (will get into that later) or an empty box, or an animate object like a sheep or a camel.
The inanimate obects can be pretty statc on the road if they are heavy and there isn't much wind, so you can normally swerve out of the way when encountering them. But if there is a sandstorm or just a heavy wind travelling between mountain passes or over a barren valley, then the object can move to the lane that you're in or the lane you're swerving into. Also, the wind doesn't have a normal direction that it blows in, but generally you can notice which way it is blowing so you might get into the lane that is from the direction of the wind so the wind ends up blowing the box away from you.
If the object is an animate one like a sheep or a camel or a bedouin crossing the highway, then you might end up in a worse predicament. Sheeps and humans are pretty fast and can get out of the way. As for camels, they're stubborn creatures that will not move, but rather will come at you and attack the care that is coming at them. They way they do this, and I am NOT joking, is they will stand their ground when seeing your car, and when you're about to hit them they will jump. Not like a hop but mor elike a pounce. They'll jump onto your car and then due to their weight (about one ton) they will cause your roof to cave in on you. So basically, they won't let you take them out without them actually taking you out too. If you see a camel up ahead, then try your best to slow down and come to a complete stop.
Thridly, the tires... In Saudi Arabia, people aren't as careful when it comes to maintaining their vehicles. Whether it's not changing the oil on time, or letting the break pads come to a grinding end or whether it's simply not checking the wear and tear of their tires.
Many times you'll find shreds of an old tire scattered accross the motorway. nine times out of ten you'll find the vehicle that lost that tire. Whether the vehicle survived the blowout or not, others can still be harmed by the tire shreds left on the road. Most normal tires have lots of metal grids running through them which help the tire support the car's weight and keep the tire firm.
When the tire blows to shreds, these metal wires are left bare, ready to shred whatever runs over them. The bigger the tire (say a bus or truck tire), the worse the shredding. Due to the many accidents caused by tire blowouts, the government has legislated VERY, VERY tough laws against buying or selling used tires. A lot of small tire shops will change a car's tires for new ones but then save the old tires and maybe even re-tread them so that they can sell them at a fraction of the cost. I'll admit once my tire blew out on my way back from Riyadh, and th eonly thing I could afford was a used tire which I bought from a small bedouin village on the way. I had very little money left and the guy at the shop had a used tire which I could buy for around 30 Saudi Riyals, when most regular tires cost around 150 or more.
Due to better police monitoring of speeding on the motorways, as well as stricter legislation, it's becoming more and more uncommon to see the tragedies that many of us have gotten used to seeing on a drive to or back from Makkah. May Allah make it easier for the Government to do its job and keep the masses safe. May He also guide the masses to think not only about themselves, but their fellow drivers on these national motorways. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world, may Allah make things safer for us in the future... Aameen
