You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

ON DRIVING IN ARABIA

BEDOUIN DRIVERS

Many unique driving situations in Saudi Arabia warrant special attention. Early in my sojourn there, I was warned of one hazard unique to the Kingdom. The king has given white Toyota pickups to encourage the Bedouin to remain in the desert raising goats to provide a domestic source of meat. White Toyota pickups usually belonged to Bedouin shepherds. I was told to give them wide berth because the Bedouin drivers are used to driving out in the limitless sand of the Saudi desert. They tend to ignore the painted lines on the pavement. The king also gave Mercedes trucks to the Bedouin Camel drivers. These three-axel Mercedes trucks were intended to convert the Kingdom’s shipping from camel caravans across the desert sand to trucks on the Kingdom’s new highways.

Collisions seem to be common in Saudi Arabia. They range from bumper benders at stop signs, because some foreigner actually stopped, to critical, head-on crashes at high speeds. In the early 1980s, we saw devastatingly smashed Mercedes and other expensive cars lying alongside Saudi highways as evidence of high-speed, head-on crashes. At that time, these wrecks were left because the Saudi Government felt that they would act as a deterrent to risky driving. It is difficult to understand how such accidents could happen when the roads, which are not heavily traveled, are wide for two lanes and usually fairly straight. They do however have blind spots due to the wave pattern of dunes which the highways traverse.

The smashed cars that we saw were usually near the top of a rise, where the highway passed over a large sand dune. I imagined that the driver of the smashed car would have been traveling at normal highway speeds, which were often in excess of 80 mph, when driving up an incline, he would suddenly be confronted with two vehicles, side by side, coming over the top towards him. One traveling at the “normal” highway speed, and the other passing in oncoming lane at 100 MPH. The violent destruction of the mangled vehicles left alongside the road were the remains of such ferocious head-on collisions.

One possible explanation could be that the faith of the passing driver was so great that he believed that Allah would protect him if he were to risk a blind pass. If, on the other hand, it is Allah’s will that he should die, there is nothing he could do to prevent it. This may seem to us, in the West, as an absurd conjecture, but consider that in Saudi Arabia it is a cultural necessity to say “enshAllah”, following all declarative sentences. If a Saudi were to make a statement in which he states his intention to take action of any kind. For example “I will meet you for lunch tomorrow.” And he omits this simple acknowledgment “enshAllah”, which translated to English is “God willing”, or “If it is God’s plan”, that is like declaring himself to have Allah’s divine power to determine the future. With this cultural context in mind, it is possible that a driver, wanting to pass a slower vehicle, would place his faith in Allah’s hands and initiate his pass despite the fact that he could not see the road ahead. It is almost like a testimonial to his great trust in Allah’s determination of the future. Of course, it is also possible that the passing driver was not pious but simply too impatient to wait for the next clear, straight stretch of highway. One of my colleagues, Glen Looker, was killed in such a crash.

Over my six years living in Saudi Arabia, I was confronted with two cars racing toward me on two occasions. In both instances, I pulled to the far right edge of the pavement. Fortunately, on both occasions, the driver being passed also pulled to his far right side of the highway, allowing space for the risk-taking passer to proceed by squeezing between us. If the other driver had not pulled to his right, I was prepared to turn off into the desert rather than face certain death in a head-on crash. When driving in Saudi Arabia, one must be constantly aware of the conditions alongside the road in case a sudden diversion onto the shoulder or even off the road, would be necessary to avoid a head-on crash.

On one occasion, while riding on a bus heading north on a two-lane highway in Saudi Arabia. I was seated in the window seat on the left side of the bus. Our bus had just passed over a small hill when I noticed the back end of a truck stopped in the southbound lane one-half mile ahead of us. The road ahead was straight and flat for several miles. Our bus slowed as we approached the truck. The truck was a three-axel, ten-wheel Mercedes truck of the type the King provides to the Bedouin camel drivers. A man was walking away from the back of the truck. He was walking slowly. His head bowed and shoulders stooped.

Our bus slowed to a walking speed because another man was running across the highway in front of it. He was running towards the front of the truck. When our bus passed the truck, I saw why the man was running towards the truck. An older sedan, of the kind we would see packed with migrant Pakistani or Indian laborers, was smashed into the front of the truck. The man, who had been rushing to help the passengers in the car, looked through the shattered windows of the sedan, turned slowly and walked away. Thankfully, I could not see what was inside those twisted window frames, but I could imagine the carnage that he saw there. He did not attempt to assist survivors. There were none.

Although our bus passed this grisly scene, I could not clear my mind of what I had seen there. It set me to wonder what could have happened in the moments before we passed. What were the events that preceded this violent collision? What were the drivers thinking in those seconds before impact, while it was still possible to take diversionary action?

In this fatal collision, neither driver had taken evasive action. The north bound truck was stopped in the center of the southbound lane, and the south bound sedan was smashed into and under the center of the truck.

The truck driver, who was walking away from the scene of devastation in front of his truck, had apparently initiated his pass before cresting the hill. Once on top, he certainly could have seen the approaching sedan on the clear straightaway ahead of him. Did he not look? Did he think he had sufficient speed to complete his pass? Did he not think to pull to his right, forcing the car being passed to move right? Did it occur to him that if it was Allah’s plan for them to die, so be it? Was it an inexperienced driver, a camel herder, in the driver’s seat of that truck?

As for the driver of the car full of laborers. He also lacked driving skills. He had a clear view of the road ahead. Certainly, he saw the truck coming toward him in his lane. If given the choice of veering off the highway onto the shoulder or staying in the southbound lane to challenge the oncoming truck, even a modestly skilled driver would have taken their chances on the shoulder. Perhaps he felt some sense of moral indignation, thinking that the truck had no business being in his lane. Perhaps he hoped the truck would pull to its right, providing him space to get by. Perhaps he thought Allah would save them, or if not, then their fate was part of Allah’s plan.