speedhump

Lighter side on the road

2005-04-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

A joke picked from the weekly: -
One day while driving with my four-year old daughter, I beeped the horn by mistake. She turned and looked at me for an explanation.

I said, “I did that by accident.”

She replied, “I know that. …….. because you didn’t say YOU JERK afterwards!”

Do I need to add my comments?

Parking woes

2005-03-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

Parking had never been a problem in Doha. There were plenty of open spaces and you could always find parking lanes no matter which corner street that you went in to. But that situation has now changed, perhaps for ever.

With the advent of a building boom, wherever you went you find that there is a construction in progress. The skyline appears to have been filled by crane tops and intermittent dusts rising from the building site. Good thing is that every site is barricaded with some secure fences but there is an increasing risk of debris and mud falling on to the cars parked nearby.

Add to that, since all the open spaces have been taken up by the constructions, the drivers are finding it extremely difficult to find a place to park their cars. In a country where almost every household owns at least one car, you could imagine the mayhem. To compound the problem, an effective public transport system is yet to be established here. Consequently, there is no alternative to one using his own car in order to get around. Word is already in the air of plans that are currently in the offing to levy parking fee at the few public parking lots which are left.

Sex Drives

2005-03-20T03:38:00.000-08:00

There was a news item posted recently in Newswire which said that in the US teen drivers continue to be overrepresented in fatal crashes, and that data showed young women aged 16 to 24 years were in substantially more injury crashes than young men of the same age range. Since 1975, driver fatal crash rates have increased by 57 percent for women. It said that looking at the numbers, it's clear that the young women were at increasing risk on the road, and needed to be given information that can change that tragic fact.

It is somewhat a similar situation that exists here too, as far as young drivers are concerned. But fortunately not many young women are involved in crashes or other less serious accidents. Normally speaking, women of that young age have yet to start taking up to regular driving but a majority of our women drivers fall in a higher age group. Chances are that it would be the girl with a job or more mature housewives who are more likely to drive a car than a college going teen.

Not that there aren’t any younger women drivers but their numbers do not appear to be significant.

When they drive, the women drivers are seemingly more careful and they tend to remember the rules that they were taught at the driving school. That’s a relief but wonder how much longer that relief is going to last?

A straight and then a curve

2005-03-16T03:50:00.000-08:00

That wasn’t a very easy thing for Abi to do; keeping his mouth shut while somebody sitting across him was asking some irritating questions. But he knew he had to. He have had very few, if at all, previous occasions in which he found himself presented with this predicament.

What could he have done any way? This wasn’t the first opportunity in the present saga when he was outsmarted. Given the circumstances, keeping his mouth shut offered his best save.

That damn crook appeared to have taken out his policy only some hours ago. No wonder the insurance man sitting on the opposite chair appeared suspicious and was fuming (annoying it is but then who would not).

It all started a good fortnight previously. The speed limit in a round about is 30 kmph (only if somebody bothered). But there still are a few people left who would normally abide by laws. Abi is a good example. But the driver who came in just behind him did not have any such affection towards the law. That realization came in the form of a visible depression about the rear side of Abi’s car.

Again it was strange that Abi behaved normally, with his normal flair for invectives having been unusually restrained. The man who was standing in front of him looked a perfect gentleman in grey suit and trousers. His car looked run down but his visiting card spoke of a very impressive job he held at that moment.

Luck had it that a highway patrolman came in the most opportune moment and as good officer and citizens that they were, the three of them agreed between them that they could meet at the evening at the traffic police station to file the paper works so that Abi would be reimbursed by the gentleman’s insurance.

To cut a long story short, Abi could finally get his papers after a long labor that involved daily trips to the police station for nearly two weeks. The gentleman in the suit always found some excuse not to turn up. It took some intense diatribe and certain veiled threats for the opponent to finally show up carrying his insurance papers. After a closeted talk between the policeman and the grey suited gentleman Abi was finally handed over the precious police report accompanied by a profuse apology.

The relief was immense and Abi had no time to waste. He promptly headed to the insurers where he was more than distressed by our plain talking insurance man. What to do. The crooks manage to get the better of everybody else all the time. That recognition was depressing, upsetting and well, humiliating too.

It transpired that the crook hasn’t had an insurance cover at the time of the accident. Now having taken the insurance cover only hours ago, he managed the cop to issue a report which said that the accident took place only an hour ago. So the insurance company was presented with a sizeable claim only hours from the policy inception; rarely did that happen for a motor policy. The worse thing was that he managed to make a normally straight forward Abi to go against his consciousness, involving him – unwittingly it might be - in his scheme of things.

A useful tool but don’t turn it in to a bad one!

2005-03-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

There were reports in the local press which said that road accidents accounted last year as the number one cause of deaths in Qatar. The most striking aspect of the report is the average age of the victims which was put at a mere 28 years. This is compared with the average age of 68 years in the case of the second most killer (cardiac problems). The third reason being cancer and the average age of those died of this reason is put at 62 years.

More and more younger people are taking in to driving these days and I am not sure if any of them is displaying the necessary discipline required of them, while they use a common or public facility. Some of them appears not to have even crossed the threshold of eligibility in terms of their age. In my opinion, it is reckless on the part of their parents (or whoever have done so) to hand over the car keys to young people who have yet to mature as socially responsible individuals. The report cited an incident of a teenager who got the car keys from his father and while driving hit another kid who was killed on the spot. In another instance cited, a family of nine was perished just in a single traffic accident.

The car is a useful tool but like anything else, it has got a down side too. Improper use could turn it to a fatal instrument. So let us be responsible; let us live and be not the one who would cause another life to be ruined by our fault.

Flashing hazard

2005-03-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

That is the symptom. Long queues on all lanes, slow advancing movements and vehicles weaving around the lanes in a bid to move ahead quicker. (Of course, when you are sitting in the driver’s seat, even the pretence of patience deserts you. You become impatient, irritatingly upright and - more often than not - foul mouthed). Any way this is the symptom of something nasty ahead. In all probability yet another accident. Strange it might seem but traffic accidents are not fortuitous events anymore. With the kind of reckless behaviors that the drivers come to display, these have turned more or less predictable now a days. So it’s another hour when you are damned to cope with slow moving traffic, irrational honking and young men displaying their trapeze skills on four-wheelers.

Traffic round about’s are funny things too, given that - since you dared to take your vehicle on the road - you don’t give much damn about your life any way. They got lanes marked on them but it’s up to you to interpret how you use them. Naturally, traffic accidents and consequent jams are nothing conspicuously new.

There are no other indicators to think otherwise. Sure enough, by the time, I reached the beloved round-about, three vehicles could be seen dutifully flashing their hazard lamps. In a three lane road, they occupied the whole two inner lanes and the traffic trickled through the single lane which was lying free. With everybody trying to outsmart the other, it was a dreadful adventure indeed. But unless you don’t mind to be indefinitely trapped about –that’s not much safe anyway-, you must dare to go ahead.

But before I realized what had happened, the first of the three cars involved in the apparent hit, swirled past me with a freighting boom. The other too followed suit and the place has become normal once again.

It transpires that the boys in those three cars obviously decided to have the fun of a hiatus and what better place they could have come up with than in the middle of this heavy traffic flow when the rush is at its top? They positioned their car so cleverly that whoever seen them would only think that it’s another case of some loony boys landing themselves in yet another close-call. Isn’t it cool, old man?

My Luxury, my bondage

2005-03-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

I am nostalgic about my older lifestyle; a much simpler but nevertheless immensely fulfilling way of my life. Indeed I have never been comfortable about the flashy and glossy style that I find myself surrounded with. No way that I am going to love the meaningless luxuries which I find myself having been trapped in to.

Every time I go out in my car (you guessed it, its brand new), I try to add up how many older machines I could still see driven by the street; not many by any count. Everywhere I could see it’s the elegance of neat and immaculately painted fleet of motor cars charming around. It would be some rare occasion that I find some poor, old fashioned fellow yet braving to take a ride on his older model.

It looks as if there has been a sudden attack of an affluence outburst. Sensing from the look of it, we must have now been extremely successful in eradicating poverty after all.

You do not need the much burden your brain before realizing that much of this hallo is only pretence. Not many of these elegant vehicles are actually owned by its driver (or whoever you would think the car belonged to). Almost all of these are procured under finance arrangements; in other words they were bought using bank loans.

There was a time when taking a bank loan is looked upon as a measure of last sorts. Only a person who is about to sink financially or who is in dire straights would think of going to his bank asking for a loan. Even then taking a loan is considered most cumbersome with all the paper works and the need for guarantors or collateral. Whatever guarantees you give whatever collateral you provide the bankers then were never seemed to be satisfied.

Now, a strange reversal has happened. The bank is after you, coaxing and cajoling, that you take a loan from them. In fact, all of the retail banking today appears reduced to personal loans. You need no guarantor, have minimal or no paper work and they even managed to make it fashionable to go for a loan on every single luxury that is available; such that not taking a loan is the closest thing to committing a crime in this day and age.

Every one of the personal thing that we possess, we owe it to our bank. Education, House, furniture, car, personal computers, properties, business and what not. All of us earn salaries, just to give it back to our beloved bank. It’s has all the looks and charms of the good old slavery. Why has it become so easy for us to willingly give ourselves away to such bondage?

Just to say hello!

2005-03-06T03:39:00.000-08:00

I am trying to start and thought would say HELLO! to everyone at first. See you all often. Thanks