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. I was told to be wary of white Toyota pickups. These usually belonged to Bedouin shepherds. The king has given these Toyotas to encourage the Bedouin to remain in the desert raising goats to provide a domestic source of meat. I was advised to give these white pickups a wide birth because the Bedouin drivers are used to driving in the wide open space. They tend to ignore the painted lines on the pavement. The king also gave trucks to the Bedouin Camel drivers. These three-axel, 10-wheel Mercedes trucks were intended to convert the Kingdom’s shipping from camel caravans across the desert sand to trucks on the 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.

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 down towards him. One traveling at the “normal” highway speed, and the other passing in his lane at 100 MPH. The violent destruction of the mangled vehicles left alongside the road were the remains of such ferocious head-on collisions.

It is difficult to understand how such accidents could happen when the roads, which are not heavily traveled, are wide and usually fairly straight. 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. On the other hand, if 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 “inshAllah”, following all declarative sentences in which an individual states the intention to take action of any kind. To omit this simple “inshAllah”, which translates to “God willing”, or “If it is God’s plan”, is to usurp God’s power. It is like declaring yourself to have His 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 fate in Allah’s hands and initiate his pass despite the fact that he could not see the road ahead. 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, twice I was confronted with two cars racing toward me, 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. When driving in Saudi Arabia, one must be constantly aware of the conditions on the side of the road in case a sudden diversion onto the shoulder or even out into the desert 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. As we approached the truck our bus slowed. 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 it. 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, was looking through the shattered window of the sedan. 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. He turned, shaken by what he had witnessed, and slowly walked away.

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?

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? And was it an inexperienced 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 indignity, 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.

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