One of the easily most frustrating parts of the daily Dubai life is the traffic and especially the lack of basic driving etiquette in this region. First imagine the local population who literally didn't even have proper housing, let alone cars and roads about 50 years back. Then add to that equation approximately 1.7 million Indians and 1.25 million Pakistanis whose domestic driving conditions leave a lot to hope for. Surely enough for someone who comes from such a square country as Finland the chaos here is a nightmare but I can at least do my best to try to accept that. What I cannot accept is the way people have absolutely no respect for other people's safety whatsoever. Honestly, you want to kill yourself? Knock yourself out, just leave me out of it.
The most horrendous part of this complete lack of respect for life are the thousands of parents who drive around Dubai with kids in their cars - completely unrestrained. I'm not just referring to not having a proper child seat in your car, I literally mean completely unrestrained. I cannot fathom that you have children loose in the car and nowhere in your head a bell goes off "Oh wait, what happens with them if I have an accident?". The kids jump between the back and front seats, hang in the middle, fight, push half of their bodies out of the window or the sunroof and the parents don't even seem to notice.
The results? Yearly 53,000 children in UAE get injured in traffic and 500 lose their lives. That is just ridiculous! Most of the injuries and deaths can be easily avoided and yet it seems that these parents do not even care. The past weeks there has been a road safety campaign to alert the public of the hazards and this has been spearheaded by one of the Shaikhas [a wife of a Sheikh] who, I quote "stresses on the importance of upgrading a mother’s level of child care, and overall child safety and security".
I mean ... come on. I understand that motherhood can be a challenge and not everyone is as natural as the other but can someone please explain which part of having unrestrained child in a vehicle that travels at least 120 km per hour is UNCLEAR when safety and child care are considered? How simple can you be? If that is not clear to a mother and/or father then I think something is seriously wrong here. Certainly in cases like this the parents should both lose their driver's licence AND the car AND should be put on some kind of parenting for dummies course?
Shit, if it was up to me [life can be so unfair] their parenting rights would be revoked all together.
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