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Monday, November 28, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
roads & the road rules - 01:44 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
i've told about my personal experiences driving in bahrain, but i want to tell you about some of what others might also experience in bahrain when they drive on the roads around here.
the highways are top notch with nice wide lanes. i think (although i could be wrong) that this is because of the formula one which is hosted here. i'm pretty sure the race track uses some of the main highways, so they have to be in top condition. aside from that, bahrain is quite a wealthy country anyway, so they have more than enough money to keep the high traffic roads in good condition. then again, perhaps the nice wide lanes are just to accommodate the hummers. 
people use their car horns quite readily. it's similar to melbourne, where if you dare to wait at a green light longer than a picosecond, you'll get beeped. when driving on the highways, if you're not deemed by the cars behind you to be going fast enough, even if you're going the speed limit & not holding up any traffic, they'll zoom past you at twenty over the limit & beep you as they go past. in my few trips out in the car, i've learned to ignore the horns already, unless it seems to be intended for me.
when the traffic lights change from 'go' to 'stop', there's an orange light first & then the red, just as in australia, but when they're changing from 'stop' to 'go', the red light remains on while the orange light goes on & then they both go off to display the green light. it's kind of useful, since it means you can start moving before it goes green, saving you getting beeped.
drivers are quite aggressive around here. it reminds me a bit of sydney, where, for example, if you want to change lanes or enter heavy traffic, you can't wait for someone to make room, you have to push your way in. if you did just wait for what you might consider a decent sized gap in the traffic, you could be waiting for quite a while, being beeped at the whole time by the cars backing up behind you. not all roads are very busy, & it depends on the time of day of course, but on the busier roads, you certainly have to take a deep breath & just go for it. our rental car doesn't have a lot of 'guts' to be able to charge out into traffic, so we have to time it rather more precisely than someone who has a car with more 'go'.
with this in mind, you have to be very aware of all the other cars around you since they're also charging around trying to make space to fit into the flow of traffic. this is particularly important since hardly anyone here ever uses their indicators. you might be travelling along nicely in your own lane when someone will start to move across right in front of you with no warning & possibly with you being in their blind spot.
when accidents occur (&, not surprisingly, they seem to happen quite often) the rules are that the involved parties are not allowed to move their cars until the traffic police arrive. you're not allowed to move your car at all. even if you're in the middle of the road, blocking traffic both ways, you have to leave your car exactly where it stopped. the reason for this is that the police can then determine who was at fault. perhaps it makes for easier policing, but crikey, it sure doesn't make for good traffic flow.
mind you, even when there's not an accident, you can still end up with cars stopped in the most amazing places. bahrain is predominantly a muslim country. prayer time (which happens several times a day) is very important to faithful muslims & this forms part of the law. if you're running late, you may stop your car wherever you need to to make sure you get to prayer on time. people will double park on the streets, on the sides of the road where no parking is allowed & even on roundabouts!
the roundabouts are difficult to get used to anyway if you come from a country where you drive on the other side of the road. in australia, where we drive on the left, roundabouts go clockwise. here in bahrain, where you drive on the right side of the road, roundabouts of course go anti-clockwise.
there don't seem to any good street maps in bahrain. the map we've been using since we got here is a kind of crappy one from budget. it doesn't list even close to all the street names. on the side with the closer up map of manama (the capital of bahrain, pronounced munna-ma), many of the major roads are named, but it still has some roads totally missing & none of the smaller roads are named. navigating around here is a bit of dark art. if you don't know your way around, you have to point your car in what you hope is the right direction & look for major landmarks.
street signs don't seem to exist on intersections. they name the roads once you're on them with a sign on the median strip & sometimes with a sign on the exits on the roundabouts, but once you're laready on a road, it's kind of too late if you've chosen the wrong one & you have to turn around & go back.
when you are navigating with the map or you know the street you're supposed to be looking for, for a non-arab like me, i find a lot of the street names difficult to distinguish from each other. for example, there's shaikh salman highway, shaikh khalifa bin salman highway & shaikh isa bin salman highway. add to that isa al khabeer avenue & shaikh isa avenue & you have a recipe for getting lost rather easily.
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Hey beautiful lady, great to see you're settling in so well. I'm not surprised it's not really fazing you at all.
Love you lots,
Helen xxxxxx