On Sunday morning Dubai was covered in a thick blanket of fog. Apparently there were 150 traffic accidents. My usual 15 minutes to work on the Al Khail Road took over 2 hours. During that time I saw the wreckage of eight multi-vehicle pile-ups. In spite of the obvious problems there were still people driving way too fast, without lights, tailgating and flashing at cars to move out of the way (big problem here but not illegal). How there were no reported fatalities is beyond me - these were some of the worst crashes I have ever seen.
I arrived at work grateful to still be in one piece and it has finally persuaded me to get a big 4x4 instead of something sporty. I think it's going to be a Mitsubishi Pajero - it's called the Shogun in Europe (apparently because pajero means w****r in Spanish!). The list price for this car is £24k in the UK. Here, and even allowing for the strong pound, it is so much cheaper at just over £12k. I've got no idea how this can be, but demonstrates just how expensive motoring is in the UK compared to the UAE. In spite of going up by over 30% last year, petrol in the Emirates is still about 5x cheaper and there is no road tax. Insurance is fixed at about 5% of the car's value if you have no no-claims and 3.8% if you have. Service is a bit different too - there is always an attendant to fill you up, he cleans your windows and often hands out free boxes of tissues for some reason I haven't yet fathomed. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a diesel car here.
2 comments:
Do drive safely as your Mother worries about you
Talking of car crashes, Pete had an altercation with the back of a Citroen Xsara Picasso over the weekend and did some fairly serious damage to his pride and joy TT. He's not best pleased and feeling sorry for himself!
He says he got distracted by something - he won't say what but I reckon it was an attractive lady at a bus stop!
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