If you’re driving from now on in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, you best ease off on your right foot: From now on the traditional 20 km per hour speed limit buffer has been removed, and the road speed is now what the road signs read. As well, the Department of Transport and Abu Dhabi Police have also reduced speeding fines to Dh300, down from Dh600.
Certainly, the change ought to be welcomed by drivers across the UAE, ensuring that there’s now a consistency and that the confusion over posted speed limits and actual speed limits has been removed. Around the globe and in the UAE itself, there are ample statistical, analytical and empirical studies showing how speeding kills. By reducing the effective speed limit to the posted one will surely improve road safety rates in Abu Dhabi too. Across the UAE, improving road safety is paramount, especially when one considers that in the seven months of 2018 alone, 88 people have been killed on our roads and another 922 injured. Poor driving habits such as sudden swerving account for one third of these grim statistics — but speed too remains a root cause. Abu Dhabi’s actions that took effect from Sunday will help lessen deaths on our roads.
This change in speeds has been long deliberated by authorities in the emirate, and police and other agencies have gone to great lengths to clearly communicate with all that the change would be taking effect and that the grace limit would be removed. Certainly, if any driver now is hit with a fine as a result of this change, it would only be fair to suggest that it’s their error and they had been warned.
