Watch what drivers do when they don't think they're being watched

Published in The National  March, 20, 2010 

How do people behave when they think nobody is watching? Especially when they are driving and think that metal bubble of their car somehow shields themselves from public view, whether the windows are tinted or not. I like to delude myself that human beings have some basic notion of what is considered bad driving or dangerous. Surely no one in their right mind would make a sudden move across three lanes without signalling. That'd be out of the question, wouldn't it? Sadly, it seems this sort of behaviour is only out of the question in the fantasy land of my mind. 

Arriving at the outskirts of Dubai, that notion quickly fades as I face near-insurance encounters at least three times within 100 metres of Jebel Ali. Of late, I have come to experience this Dubai traffic at close hand on a daily basis and, my, my, how people behave badly when they think no one is looking!. I have seen some bad behaviour on the capital's semi-neat street grid, but Dubai seems to attract some jaw-dropping antics on its endless merry-go-round of streets that criss-cross over the city's main artery, Sheikh Zayed Road. That one impressive lifeline seems to force all drivers to form queues at exits no matter where you want to head in the city. Failing to catch that crucial exit will lead to yet another time-wasting detour sucking away a tad more of your already falling fuel tank levels.

As a newbie to Dubai, I'm usually too busy to pay attention to crazy things going on, except when I am immediately endangered. But when I am at home, it's a different story. Sipping coffee on my balcony overlooking Sheikh Zayed Road, I can traffic-watch to my heart's content. The other day, I just knew one adventurous driver believed he wasn't being watched. My mouth dropped open as I watched him back out of an exit to the left side of the service road, reverse a few hundred meters further until he reached the main road and then calmly continued on his way towards Abu Dhabi. After snapping out of the shock, I wondered why I hadn't done the same manoeuvre the night before instead of taking that huge petrol-guzzling, time consuming detour to get onto the main road. Who'd be watching anyway?

It's the same "nobody's watching" mentality that makes leaving your car parked pretty much anywhere fraught with danger. If you fail to chaperone your four-wheeled buddy, you soon learn that your poor vehicle can't really fend for himself. Like my Yaris, which ended up a victim of a bumper-assisted parking episode while patiently waiting for me while I was at the movies. Nobody was watching, so who cares, right?

As I surveyed the damage to my car I thought how the driver was very lucky that I hadn't witnessed his or her appalling parking abilities. Then there was the agents of law enforcement I watched parade up and down the JBR Walk in a golf cart one Sunday afternoon. The officer behind the wheel spun around while carrying on a lively conversation on his mobile phone. Surely he must have realised people were watching. Perhaps it was the golf cart that stopped him from setting the example. Perhaps laws on driving golf carts along pedestrian ways are different. Perhaps I am just mistaken, it's not only when people are not watching that humans misbehave. It's just when we happen to forget ourselves.