Traffic

It's 3 am here. The rooster is having one of its jet-lag fits again... crooning away... as hubby continued to snore in his dreamland. The next day is a non-working day. No worries about sleeping late.

Some days ago, I got to experience first hand for myself the infamous traffic jam situation here. Prior to coming here, I heard about Dubai traffic jam reputation. Thought it would not be worse than Singapore but my recent experience proved me so very wrong! For a distance that could have taken 15 minutes at most, it took 1 hour! It was a normal work day evening when people finished work to return home. I felt nauseous as the taxi I was in, inched forward bit by bit, as I saw light from outside turned to darkness in that endless journey. Being stuck in that jam for 1 hour had led me to decide that hubby and I will get only auto cars in future... Spare our feet the suffering to control the 3 panels below!

Thankfully, the taxi driver was a patient guy. Yes, he had bits of frustration with the traffic but he was definitely a lot more patient than most male drivers whom I know would be cursing and swearing by then! The driver's gentle temperament certainly lessened the frustration in me. I also appreciated that the driver switched from Arabic music to English pop music in the early part of the journey. Thank God that this driver was also willing to heed my suggestions to try other routes. I've seen drivers who ignored passengers' instructions to go by a certain way. One driver even told the passenger to exchange seats with him to drive, since he wanted to go a particular route! That passenger (whom I know) subsequently handled the driver in a tougher way (no fists fights, just to clarify). I thought that was justified.

Road accidents had been occuring more frequently here. I was shocked to read about the statistics: 150 road accident deaths in the past 6 months!!! That's pretty crazy! Hopefully when the train system is set up in a couple of years, such deaths could be avoided. Meantime, the speed limit of 120km/hr (or more) had been reduced to about 100km/hr... on the 7-lane long stretch of Sheik Zayed Road, infamous for traffic jams and road accidents.