RIYADH: Imposition of severe penalties for traffic violations, including deportation in the case of foreigners convicted of repeated driving offenses in the Kingdom, will come into force under a new driving code to be applied soon.
Speeding and reckless driving have ended the lives of many people in Saudi Arabia over the last 20 years, yet most drivers stubbornly refuse to release their push on the gas pedal.
Statistics on road safety in Saudi Arabia are grim, and improvements are too slow. The General Directorate of Traffic stated in a report that an average of 17 residents in the Kingdom die in a road accident each day.
According to local Arabic daily Al-Madinah, driving licenses in Saudi Arabia will be endorsed with penalty points for each offense.
Any foreigner who gets 18 penalty points three times during his stay in the Kingdom will have his residency canceled and will be deported for putting people’s lives at risk, the daily said.
The report did not mention the scale for the allocated penalty points, but it is expected to be related to the severity of the offense.
Saudis and expatriate residents have praised the Kingdom's traffic monitoring system, Saher, for drastically reducing accidents on the Kingdom's roads, but questioned the way tickets were issued after it was revealed that the amount of fines paid by traffic violators last year amounted to over SR5 billion.
According to them, workers on low incomes are the hardest hit. Online blogs and social network discussions described the system as a way of making revenue by draining people's income.
A high-ranking police official wishing to remain anonymous explained that if someone doesn't pay his traffic fine within one month, the penalty amount goes up automatically.
The public outcry over the doubling of unpaid traffic fines resulted last February in the Grand Mufti issuing a fatwa. Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh said increasing the amount of a traffic ticket over time is a form of riba (usury), which is prohibited in Islam.
The new driving code will seek to encourage positive driving by dropping all previous penalty points if a driver spends one year without any offense.
Everybody with a valid Saudi driving license will be credited with two points for safe driving if he has no offense during one Hijri year.
The World Health Organization found Saudi Arabia to have the world’s highest number of deaths from road accidents, and the victims are mostly males aged between 16 and 36.
Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has recorded 4 million traffic accidents, which has led to 86,000 deaths and 611,000 severely injured, of which 7 percent resulted in permanent disabilities.
The major cause of traffic accidents in the Kingdom is speeding, which accounted for 42 percent of all reported traffic accidents, according to a study conducted by Ali Saeed Al-Ghamdi at King Saud University. Almost a third of the traffic accidents in Riyadh are due to drivers violating the traffic signals, closely followed by 18 percent of people who take illegal U-turns.
Other dangerous driving activities include sudden stops, speaking on the cell phone while driving, general disregard for safety signs, and, most importantly, the carelessness of using seatbelts.
Less than 2 percent of the drivers involved in car accidents in Saudi Arabia wear their seatbelts, compared to 62 percent in the USA and 90 percent in Canada. Studies show that seatbelts can reduce the chance of death or serious injury from a car crash by almost half.
Another major problem is the number of minors found behind wheels in Saudi Arabia. It is a common phenomenon to see children craning their necks to look ahead while driving. A study by King Saud University showed 7 percent of teenage drivers were involved in accidents, compared to 2.05 percent in the US in a year.
The government and the media have launched several campaigns to curb speeding and careless driving in the Kingdom, but have not achieved much success. More shocking reports reveal that Saher employees, who put a fine on drivers for violating traffic laws, have also been physically attacked.
Statistics also show that in one out of every eight cases of traffic accidents worldwide, some form of physical disability occurs, while in Saudi Arabia, six out of eight accidents result in physical disability. This figure alone should be a wake-up call for all irresponsible drivers.
In an attempt to improve the situation in the Kingdom, the Rehabilitation Hospital in King Fahd Medical City in Riyadh has launched an awareness campaign to show intermediate and high school students the dangers of traffic law violations.
Penalty point system to improve road safety to be applied soon
