Serious About Traffic Regulation in Doha, Qatar
We were all at dinner, having a wonderful time when the traffic issue came up.
“There’s so much traffic now!” they were all saying.
To me, traffic in Doha is pretty tame. It’s been six years since we were here for the first time, and Doha was still “sleepy little Doha.” We took photos of the changing skyline almost monthly from the spit where the Bandar restaurants used to be (one day they just disappeared!) and gasped at how fast Doha was changing.
There are a lot of changes. Traffic on the ring roads has been greatly streamlined, although it seems they continue to engineer D ring, over and over again. I just hope one day they will get it right and it will be open, all the way from the road to the north to the airport.
There are traffic lights at the roundabouts, and the traffic flows so smoothly I am astounded. There is still a lot of traffic around the seven to nine at night shopping/dining/visiting time, but the traffic lights have regulated the formerly death-defying roundabouts.
“Go! Go!” I told AdventureMan as the light started flashing green, and he just looked at me as if I had grown a second head.
“Flashing green means STOP!” he informed me.
“Flashing YELLOW means stop,” I informed him right back.
“Not in Qatar,” he said with the tone of voice that says ‘don’t argue this point with me.’
At dinner I learned he was absolutely right. If you enter a traffic circle on a flashing green and the light changes, the cameras – they are everywhere – will take your photo. They will take your photo and you will have a fine, a whopper of a fine, QR6,0000. That translates to around $1,700 in US Dollars. Gasp. And – here’s the cruncher – it is ENFORCED.
There was a time when I lived in Qatar before when the huge SUV behind me pushed me into the roundabout when I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. You still see the cowboys drive up on the sidewalks to cut across an empty field, but there are fewer and fewer of those empty fields left in Qatar. There is none of the speeding and weaving along the ring roads we used to see – there are cameras EVERYWHERE. People get fines for waiting at the airport doors, instead of parking. People get significant fines for going even 10 km over the speed limit. Points are assessed for moving violations, and they add up fast.
I’m going to have to improve my driving skills. I developed some aggressive habits, driving in Kuwait, and I am going to have to tone it down to survive the cameras in Qatar.
I am very interested to see how rapidly behavior can change when penalties are enforced. I am truly (and happily) shocked an how effective it can be. I await with great interest the year-end statistics, to see how the accident rate has been brought down – I bet we all get a very good surprise.
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6 years only… and the population have learned driving manners by enforcing obscene fines on them!!!
We have fines and cameras and rules…yet people still defy! I wonder what else is needed to shake them into civilized driving?!
Actually, Daddy’s Girl, I think the cameras and fines have only been in place and enforced for maybe one year – MAYBE a little longer, but I don’t think so. If you make it painful enough, people change.
I’ve seen the cameras going up in Kuwait, too. Maybe Kuwait is about to get a little shake-up, you think? All it takes is a willingness, from the top down, to commit to equal enforcement across the board, against all violators. It can happen. Yes, it can. 🙂
If the fines are horrendous you open the door for bribes and abuse . You got to balance fines and enforcement
Good point, as usual, Daggero. I think the fine has to be enough to get someone’s attention, and the enforcement has to be consistent and applied equally to all. I hadn’t thought about the bribes and abuse . . . And first, you have to enforce the laws.