Tut tut!

Another interesting day in the traffic on my way to work this morning.  I even managed to take a couple of photos as ‘evidence’.

There is a long, six lane, straight piece of road on the eastern ring road around Riyadh.  As we approached a major intersection the cars start ‘jockeying’ for ‘pole position’.  Mostly this is done by attempting to straddle the lane markings in an effort to block out the queue-jumpers.  The problem is that by straddling the lane marking you actually allow more lanes of traffic as cars squeeze alongside of yours.  The right two lanes are dedicated for right turning traffic only and a raised concrete median strip appears between lanes 4 and 5 about 200 metres short of the intersection.

However this doesn’t deter the queue-jumpers who will use lanes 5 & 6 down to the start of the median strip and then push across into lane 3 & 4.  Of course the vehicles in 3 & 4 try and block them or squeeze over against lanes 1 & 2.  It gets even worse as some vehicles wanting to get into lane 4 will form lanes 7 & 8 (driving on the verge) until they get to the start of the median strip.

 

The 4x4 is trying to block the car next to us squeezing in between it and the truck. He is also in lane 5 but wants to be in lane 4.

Today there was one idiot who arrived in lane 8 and actually forced (nudged, tooted, waved and honked) his way across all 7 lanes of traffic to reach lane 1 before the lights.  What a snarl-up.  It's not surprising that sometimes drivers resort to fighting.

 

Lanes 5 & 6 to the right of the median strip. Now the median strip is there it’s possible to see the few vehicles that really want to take the mandatory right turn.  Sometimes the median strip doesn’t deter the 4x4 drivers who simply drive over it when they reach the intersection.

So there we are at the intersection waiting on a red light.  Six lanes of vehicles squeezed into four lanes of roadway.  The lights turn green and all six lanes surge forward to the opposite side of the intersection where there are FOUR marked lanes.  More honking, hand waving and nudging as six lanes of traffic fight their way back into four. 

Now if everyone just kept to their lane and didn’t try and jump the queue the traffic would actually move much faster! 

Women can’t drive here.  Some westerns say that if women could drive in the country then the traffic wouldn’t be as aggressive.  I tend to disagree, and believe there would probably be twice as many aggressive drivers!