It was only when applying to renew his housemaid's residency permit that Mishari Al-Ghamdi discovered that he had a traffic violation against his name – for speeding, to be precise. Nothing unusual in that, one might think, though Mishari begged to differ with officials at the Passports Department. For Mishari had never driven a car – at high-speed or otherwise – in his entire life. Such are the mysteries of traffic infractions in the Kingdom, since Mishari is not alone in his bewilderment. Young Mohammed Faisal had only just paid some SR4,000 in traffic fines to enable him to renew his license, but upon his return to the office discovered that he had managed to collect a new fine for jumping a red light. “I've never gone through a red light in my life, but when I went to the Traffic Department office to verify the information, the official said: ‘Pay now and check later'!” Mohammed said. “I told him that I'd only just paid up for a whole lot of previous fines and that this one cannot be correct, but he said: ‘That's what I've got on my computer.'” “I had to pay up or else the fine would have just got bigger the longer I delayed paying. How can this be?!” Pay up now Hani Al-Jad'ani is a 27-year-old taxi driver who feels he is swimming against the tide. “I found out I had SR450 worth of fines to pay when I went to renew my driving license, but I didn't have the money to pay right away,” Hani says. “When I'd got the money together a couple of weeks later I went to the office to pay up, only to find out that the fines had gone up to SR 900!” “The officer said: ‘You have to pay!'” It is clear that many traffic violations are being recorded without the driver's knowledge, and in some cases without the driver having committed them, or even having ever driven a car. “We record around 10,000 traffic violations and 300 accidents per day,” said Mohammed Hassan Al-Qahtani of Jeddah's Traffic Department. “There are no ‘random infractions' as some claim. The new system is clear and straightforward. Traffic violations are recorded according to a single certifiable process that defines the nature of the infraction and the deadline for payment. The motorist should make a minimum payment on the fine within 30 days of being officially informed of his violation, and any query or dispute can be taken to the disputes tribunal. If there is found to be any error in the information concerning the motorist or his vehicle then the official responsible for issuing the violation will be called to account.” We are human “The Traffic Department processes 12,800 administrative operations a day,” Al-Qahtani said, “and we are human. We are not infallible. Yet we only receive on average eight complaints a week. Some turn out to be justified, some not.” Mishari Al-Ghamdi, who has never put his foot on a car accelerator in his life and depends on his sons to ferry him from place to place, was told that he would have to pay his speeding fine otherwise his housemaid's residency permit would not be renewed. “So I went down to the Traffic Department, where they told me where and when I had supposedly been speeding,” Mishari said. “When I asked about the identity of the officer who managed to catch me speeding, I was told that there was no one there who could tell me.” “I gave up and paid.”
