Staying in the KSA – Driving

Until I watched this video, I thought I didn't want to share this story because I am afraid I made wrong judgement about it. Believe it or not watch this link video than continue reading my story.

My car

I first arrived in Jubail on 29 September 2010 and bought a new Toyota Fortuner on 6 Dec in the same year. In between that I took a bus to go to work. In two months I took the best of opportunity to familiarised the road system and the way people drive in Saudi. As I come from Malaysia, driving was right hand drive but in Saudi driving is left hand drive. I thought familiarising the driving and road system was the most difficult situation, therefore whenever I took a bus I always took the seat behind the driver so that I will be familiar with the road system. I was wrong, very wrong. There is much more things I must learn.

While taking a bus everyday to work, I saw drivers drove like racing each other. The bus drivers drove fast although at the front was a junction or bump and break hard when reaching s stop. You can image what happened to the passengers. When they couldn't overtake on the right hand side, they will overtake on the left hand side. That is why I decided to get my own car as soon as possible. However, there are more challenges when drive own car here. 

Malaysians are a little lucky staying here. We don't need to go to driving school to get a licence. What we need was, just bring an original Malaysia driving licence, translated into Arabic, get all the required documents and bring it to Al-Khobar driving school, with SAR400 then, we get a KSA driving licence that last for 10 years.

A speed trap vehicle ahead

Unlike driving in Malaysia and other GCC countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, drivers in Saudi Arabia are aggressive. Driving and parking in cities and housing areas as though there is no traffic rule applied. High speed in housing area, driving on the wrong side of the road and parking anywhere on road sides are common. Jumping traffic light, stop in the middle of the road or cross queue or taking a U-turn from far right to the left without signals is very common. There is no term 'give way' in the mind of Saudis drivers. If we want to reverse, taking a junction at no traffic light, we must wait until all traffic clear. There is no way the other drivers will give way for us, for the them it is my way.

Driving on the highway is more challenging. Speed limit is usually 120km/hr but almost nobody drive this speed except when they see there is a speed trap vehicle a head. This speed trap vehicle is stationed at the road side, operate automatically and there is nobody inside the car. When a vehicle is spot beyond the speed limit a camera take photo and record the speed, within minutes a sms is sent to the driver. Traffic violation can be checked in Saudi Arabia MOI website.

In short, they drive as though the car doesn't have a break. The video above tell the whole story about it.

I have been driving in a few countries such as Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Singapore but never like driving in Saudi Arabia. Drivers in Saudi drive cars as though their life is worthless. Despite of speed traps vehicles are every where but they did not stop drivers drive far above the speed limit. Why?

For more than 2 years I drive is Saudi, although I always saw police traffic cars every where and at almost every traffic light but I never see even one incident a police traffic car chased a vehicle for traffic offence. Why?

I cannot answer this questions, only those who stay here and drive on Saudi cities and highway will experience these scenes.