In the Kingdom, road accidents have over the past 20 years killed over 86,000 people. Around 17 people die on a daily basis in road accidents in our country. If the road fatality rate continues to rise, it will reach 9,600 deaths a year by 2019, 68,000 injuries and SR23 billion in losses. How can we stop this bloodbath? I do not have a Saudi driving license because I have lived a great deal of my life abroad. But I recently applied for one here and went to a driving school. When I went to the school to do the test, the first thing I did when I got into the car was to fasten my seat belt. The instructor was surprised at this and asked me why I did so. I told him I was used to doing this and we had a little argument over it. He gave me a B grade that meant I had to attend driving classes for five days before I could re-sit the test. Is that not strange? I was the only Saudi in the class. The rest were expatriates. I enjoyed the class and got a chance to meet people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia. The only thing that I found shocking was that the instructor spent the first hour everyday checking attendance. The class was delivered in Arabic with most of the expatriates struggling to understand Arabic properly. Why it was delivered in Arabic is beyond me, because the poor expats in the class hardly understood anything that was said. The final written test, however, was available in different languages. The practical classes took two hours a day with each student actually driving a car for 10 minutes. That is one hour for five days. The instructor focused on only two skills. I have the following suggestions for the authorities, which will hopefully help them reduce the number of road accidents. Firstly, the theoretical and practical classes should be more intensive and should be run by independent instructors who do not work for driving schools. Secondly, driving schools should provide videos of all driving lessons available in different languages. Thirdly, all Saudi and expatriate drivers must be required to attend classes on safe driving and road etiquette. Fourthly, drivers who do not violate traffic rules for 10 straight years should be rewarded.
