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- Hajom
Jag jobbade och bodde i Jeddah, Saudi Arabien, ett antal år i slutet av 70-talet, början av 80-talet. Där fick jag då information om hur man skulle bete sig i trafiken som jag nu inte vill undanhålla er.
Om ni tycker det är överdrivet kan jag tala om att 1977 var hela Jeddah skyltat för vänstertrafik men man hade högertrafik! I alla refuger och rondeller pekade skyltarna till vänster, men alla körde till höger!
Anledningen var att någon tjänsteman varit i England och köpt trafikskyltar.
Jag skall översätta alstret någon gång när jag får tid över.
Here it comes:
Guidelines for the driver new to Jeddah
Before you start your car in Jeddah for the first time, sit in the driver’s seat, hold the steering wheel and think: I’m the only driver on the road and mine is the only car!
This may be hard to do, especially after you have seen Jeddah during rush hour, but hundreds of Jeddah drivers believe it, and so can you. And you better; you won’t have a chance unless you have this faith. Remember, your car is the car, all others are aberrations in the divine scheme.
As elsewhere, there are laws about Stop crossings, maximum speeds, an so forth, but in Jeddah, these laws only exist only as a test of character and self-esteem.
Stopping at a stop sign, for example, is prima facie evidence that the driver is an impotent chuckle-head, contrarily, ignoring a stop sign is proof that the driver is a Person of Consequence.
This is why the Jeddah driver who is stopped by a policeman goes red in the face, beats his forehead with his fists and upbraids the officer; it’s not the embarrassment or the inconvenience, it’s the implication that he is not quite important enough to drive the wrong way down a one way street.
The basic rule in cities is: force your car as far as it will go in any opening in the traffic. It is this rule that produces the famous Jeddah Four Way Deadlock. It would appear that the Deadlock could be broken if any of the cars would reverse; but this is impossible because of the other car right behind, and the car behind that,
Anyway, if a driver did reverse he would become an Object of Ridicule, for this would suggest a weakness of character.
The impossibility of reversing accounts for some of the difficulty in parking. You will find that when you stop just behind a vacant space and try backing into it, you can’t because that other car is still right behind, hooting away.
You can give up and drive on; or you can get out, go back and try to convince him to let you park. This you do by shouting Personal Abuse into his window.
One of three things will happen:
1. He may stare sullenly straight ahead and continue blowing his horn.
2. He may shout Personal abuse back to you, or
3. He may get out of his car and kill you, subsequently pleading Crime of Honour, which automatically acquits him in Saudi courts
Since Jeddahwis usually drive head on first into parking spaces, every third or fourth car has its tail end sticking out.
Driving is further complicated by double parked cars, and the Jeddawis style of leaving a side street by driving halfway into the near lane and looking. The way to deal with these hazards is to blow your horn and accelerate around them.
All Jeddah car drivers accept the axiom that anything you do while blowing your horn is sacred.
If you make a careful, in-lane stop, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies, but you may never get moving again, since you also show yourself as a weakling, whom anyone can challenge with impunity......
The thing to remember about one way streets in Jeddah is that they are not one way. A driver who has a block or less to go assumes automatically that when the authorities put up the signs, they were not thinking of cases like his.
He drives the wrong way, going full throttle to get it over with quickly, and to prove that he is in a terrible hurry.
Similarly, the round-about, with its minuet-like formation of movement is to the Jeddah driver just so much exhilarating open space. He does not go around it, he goes across it, at high speed; taking the shortest path from his point of entrance to his intended exit, while sounding his horn.
In Jeddah, the few four-lane streets become after four or five blocks, two-lane and one-lane streets. This produces the famous Funnel Effect. The funnel effect can be unnerving; the unwary motorist may get trapped against one side or the other to have to stay there until the traffic slacks off around one or two o’clock in the morning.
But the Reverse Funnel Effect is even more dangerous. Imaging the effect of bottling up a number of proud and excitable Jeddah drivers in a narrow street for half-mile or more and then suddenly release them.
It’s like dumping out a sack of white rats; as each car emerges, it tries at once to pass the car ahead of it, and if possible, two or three more. The car ahead is passing the car ahead of it, and so on....Thus the first hundred meters of the Reverse Funnel, before the cars shake down, is a maelstrom of screaming engines, spinning tires and blaring horns.
It is important to overtake when driving, as this ensures acceptance in all social areas; moral, sexual and political. Not to overtake is to lose status, dignity and reputation.
It is not where to drive that counts, but what or whom you pass on your way. Wordsworth phrased the intention more aptly, although unknowingly, with the words:
”” It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive”
The procedure is to floor your accelerator and leave it there until you come up on something you can pass. If a Jeddah driver sees the car ahead of him slow or stop, he knows there can be but two causes:
1. The driver ahead has died at the wheel, or
2. He has suddenly become a Person of No Consequence, which is roughly the same thing.
He therefore accelerates at once and passes at full speed. If the driver ahead has stopped for a gaping chasm the passer is done for, of course.
When, (not ”if”) you are involved in an automobile collision, (the Arabic word for it is ”sedam”) the procedure, provided there is no serious injury, is rigidly structured.
First all the drivers and passengers involved spring from their cars shouting Personal Abuse. Passers-by spring from their cars. Pedestrians spring forward as eye witnesses. Stores empty as shoppers join the crowd. Invalids rise from their beds for blocks around to totter to the scene.
Don’t be afraid of this crowd, even if you are absolutely wrong. Half of them will be on your side and will defend you vociferously, shouting and gesticulating. You must make an immediate, but accurate, estimate of those with you and those against you.
Based on this count, make your decision as to whether to agree to reimburse to the other party, or whether to stand out for reimbursement for yourself. Blame has nothing to do with the actions of the crashees; it is entirely a matter of status and virility.
Who cares what happened? That’s over, the present is what counts, the battle of dignity and manhood.
You are being watched by hundreds of eyes, alert to the slightest loss of poise, the first retreat from savage indignation. But you can win!
As you stand there in your wilted sport shirt comprehending little, groggy and confused, just tell yourself:
I am a Person of Consequence! I am! I am! I am!
Om ni tycker det är överdrivet kan jag tala om att 1977 var hela Jeddah skyltat för vänstertrafik men man hade högertrafik! I alla refuger och rondeller pekade skyltarna till vänster, men alla körde till höger!
Anledningen var att någon tjänsteman varit i England och köpt trafikskyltar.
Jag skall översätta alstret någon gång när jag får tid över.
Here it comes:
Guidelines for the driver new to Jeddah
Before you start your car in Jeddah for the first time, sit in the driver’s seat, hold the steering wheel and think: I’m the only driver on the road and mine is the only car!
This may be hard to do, especially after you have seen Jeddah during rush hour, but hundreds of Jeddah drivers believe it, and so can you. And you better; you won’t have a chance unless you have this faith. Remember, your car is the car, all others are aberrations in the divine scheme.
As elsewhere, there are laws about Stop crossings, maximum speeds, an so forth, but in Jeddah, these laws only exist only as a test of character and self-esteem.
Stopping at a stop sign, for example, is prima facie evidence that the driver is an impotent chuckle-head, contrarily, ignoring a stop sign is proof that the driver is a Person of Consequence.
This is why the Jeddah driver who is stopped by a policeman goes red in the face, beats his forehead with his fists and upbraids the officer; it’s not the embarrassment or the inconvenience, it’s the implication that he is not quite important enough to drive the wrong way down a one way street.
The basic rule in cities is: force your car as far as it will go in any opening in the traffic. It is this rule that produces the famous Jeddah Four Way Deadlock. It would appear that the Deadlock could be broken if any of the cars would reverse; but this is impossible because of the other car right behind, and the car behind that,
Anyway, if a driver did reverse he would become an Object of Ridicule, for this would suggest a weakness of character.
The impossibility of reversing accounts for some of the difficulty in parking. You will find that when you stop just behind a vacant space and try backing into it, you can’t because that other car is still right behind, hooting away.
You can give up and drive on; or you can get out, go back and try to convince him to let you park. This you do by shouting Personal Abuse into his window.
One of three things will happen:
1. He may stare sullenly straight ahead and continue blowing his horn.
2. He may shout Personal abuse back to you, or
3. He may get out of his car and kill you, subsequently pleading Crime of Honour, which automatically acquits him in Saudi courts
Since Jeddahwis usually drive head on first into parking spaces, every third or fourth car has its tail end sticking out.
Driving is further complicated by double parked cars, and the Jeddawis style of leaving a side street by driving halfway into the near lane and looking. The way to deal with these hazards is to blow your horn and accelerate around them.
All Jeddah car drivers accept the axiom that anything you do while blowing your horn is sacred.
If you make a careful, in-lane stop, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies, but you may never get moving again, since you also show yourself as a weakling, whom anyone can challenge with impunity......
The thing to remember about one way streets in Jeddah is that they are not one way. A driver who has a block or less to go assumes automatically that when the authorities put up the signs, they were not thinking of cases like his.
He drives the wrong way, going full throttle to get it over with quickly, and to prove that he is in a terrible hurry.
Similarly, the round-about, with its minuet-like formation of movement is to the Jeddah driver just so much exhilarating open space. He does not go around it, he goes across it, at high speed; taking the shortest path from his point of entrance to his intended exit, while sounding his horn.
In Jeddah, the few four-lane streets become after four or five blocks, two-lane and one-lane streets. This produces the famous Funnel Effect. The funnel effect can be unnerving; the unwary motorist may get trapped against one side or the other to have to stay there until the traffic slacks off around one or two o’clock in the morning.
But the Reverse Funnel Effect is even more dangerous. Imaging the effect of bottling up a number of proud and excitable Jeddah drivers in a narrow street for half-mile or more and then suddenly release them.
It’s like dumping out a sack of white rats; as each car emerges, it tries at once to pass the car ahead of it, and if possible, two or three more. The car ahead is passing the car ahead of it, and so on....Thus the first hundred meters of the Reverse Funnel, before the cars shake down, is a maelstrom of screaming engines, spinning tires and blaring horns.
It is important to overtake when driving, as this ensures acceptance in all social areas; moral, sexual and political. Not to overtake is to lose status, dignity and reputation.
It is not where to drive that counts, but what or whom you pass on your way. Wordsworth phrased the intention more aptly, although unknowingly, with the words:
”” It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive”
The procedure is to floor your accelerator and leave it there until you come up on something you can pass. If a Jeddah driver sees the car ahead of him slow or stop, he knows there can be but two causes:
1. The driver ahead has died at the wheel, or
2. He has suddenly become a Person of No Consequence, which is roughly the same thing.
He therefore accelerates at once and passes at full speed. If the driver ahead has stopped for a gaping chasm the passer is done for, of course.
When, (not ”if”) you are involved in an automobile collision, (the Arabic word for it is ”sedam”) the procedure, provided there is no serious injury, is rigidly structured.
First all the drivers and passengers involved spring from their cars shouting Personal Abuse. Passers-by spring from their cars. Pedestrians spring forward as eye witnesses. Stores empty as shoppers join the crowd. Invalids rise from their beds for blocks around to totter to the scene.
Don’t be afraid of this crowd, even if you are absolutely wrong. Half of them will be on your side and will defend you vociferously, shouting and gesticulating. You must make an immediate, but accurate, estimate of those with you and those against you.
Based on this count, make your decision as to whether to agree to reimburse to the other party, or whether to stand out for reimbursement for yourself. Blame has nothing to do with the actions of the crashees; it is entirely a matter of status and virility.
Who cares what happened? That’s over, the present is what counts, the battle of dignity and manhood.
You are being watched by hundreds of eyes, alert to the slightest loss of poise, the first retreat from savage indignation. But you can win!
As you stand there in your wilted sport shirt comprehending little, groggy and confused, just tell yourself:
I am a Person of Consequence! I am! I am! I am!