Want to get home safely? Carry some dates

I stopped at a traffic light as it was turning red one evening and a car came barrelling down the road and flew past me.

My car rocked in its slipstream and I shouted out an expletive in surprise. But to be fair to the driver, the sun was setting fast, it was getting very late for iftar, and the traffic light on this street usually takes hours to change.

To curb crazy drivers during Ramadan, perhaps the Dubai Police should given such motorists food packets for iftar so that they can stop somewhere when the sun sets and end their fast. This will help them continue on their journey home peacefully and arrive safely for dinner.

But that doesn’t seem to be happening as the police have recorded more than 400 accidents during the past month and they all obviously occur at the same time; just 30 minutes before iftar.

According to scholars and health experts, a day-long fast is said to be good for the body and soul. By not eating junk food and chugging down sugary drinks during the daylight hours, your body gets a much-needed respite.

Abstaining from food also teaches patience and self-discipline; your willpower goes up many notches and dampens your selfish impulses, they say. But I haven’t seen any display of willpower from motorists. They seem to have been starving for years.

Instead of giving out free iftar boxes to motorists; I think a better idea for the Dubai Police would be to switch off traffic signals for about an hour before the time to end the fast. That way nobody will break the law and everyone will be polite and well-mannered and let the other motorists pass first. On second thoughts, maybe this is really a very, very bad idea.

Modest fare

I saw a policeman hand out the iftar boxes at a traffic light on Al Wasl road last week. Unfortunately, I was on the other side of the road, so I am not sure what the iftar boxes contained, but I can guess it had some dates, a sandwich and a small carton of juice. A motorist in a huge SUV took the box from the policeman’s hand politely, but I am sure he must have been thinking that there was no way he was going to eat this modest fare when a feast of delicacies awaited him at home, or the restaurant to which he was invited to that evening.

Despite handing over food to motorists, Dubai Police said people are still driving on the hard shoulder and are jumping red lights to reach home as iftar time approaches. A senior police officer said most of the motorists were found speeding and driving recklessly, changing lanes without signalling and not keeping a safe distance from the vehicle in front.

That sounds like just another day on Dubai roads because that’s how a majority of people drive; but the driving force this time is the tearing hurry to get home or to that restaurant.

One day I decided to test out the Dubai Police theory and carried a bunch of dates with me before I left office for home. A few minutes into the drive the sun set and I could hear the muezzin’s call for prayer from the nearby mosque.

I slowly turned and parked on the hard shoulder. There was no one else around me. I picked up the bunch of sugary dates and found that they had got stuck to the tissue paper I had wrapped them in. It took a while to get them loose from the paper and I found that my fingers were now sticky.

When I arrived home my son asked: “Dad, what’s on your lip?” It was a long strip of tissue paper.

I decided it was better to leave early for the drive home next time.