One of the things I and many others parents love about living in Abu Dhabi is the fact that it is so safe. We can let our children wander to the shops without risk of menace or around the malls without worrying about them being abducted. But there is one aspect of life here that is terrifying.
Abu Dhabi is right down there with Eritrea when it comes to road safety. Being half Italian and having spent a lot of time in major cities like Rome, Paris, New York and London I am used to fast-moving heavy traffic. But nothing can prepare you for the driving here. It makes Hyde Park Corner look like a country lane full of Sunday drivers.
Tragedy struck on Monday when just down the road from our house three small sisters were killed while crossing the road with their three nannies. They were aged four, six and seven. The nannies survived, although one of them is now in intensive care. A speeding car hit the group and the three sisters died outright.
The car was a Lexus. I have long thought the Lexus drivers the worst on the roads. If I see one approaching me I just move out of the way. There is no point in doing anything else. A lot of them seem to believe that their cars are invincible and don’t go under 100 miles an hour.
I can’t stop thinking about those little girls and their family. Three young lives just gone, within seconds. It is too appalling to contemplate. My paper, The National, has launched a road safety campaign as a result of their deaths. I hope it makes some difference and they did not die in vain.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009
The National is so right in starting this campaign, Helena, but it isn’t going to be easy. Until we have a police force fully staffed with Nationals at police patrol level, individuals who are respected, motivated and have authority, and until there are sufficient police patrols on the roads actively engaged in deterring erant drivers, little is going to change. Then there’s the huge issue of cultural differences and people’s approach to road safety. Thousands of pedestrians are killed daily on the roads in SE Asia, including Indonesia where the maids came from, because wandering down the middle of a busy road or darting out in front of a truck is the norm. You know where these three little girls were killed, would you ever dream of attempting to cross that road there? No. But people from elsewhere in the world would and how on earth does the government even begin to educate them? I fear it’s going to be an uphill struggle.
This is so sad. How are the parents of these little girls going to carry on? What kind of support system do they have to get through the hour, the day, the night? Often when tragedy strikes, you become stigmatized and ostracized. People desert you at a time when you most need them. Not because they don-t care but because they don-t want or can-t deal with a grief they could very well experience one day too. So they look the other way. As a way to protect themselves from the pain. Hopefully I-m wrong and in Dubai things work out differently. If it-s not the case maybe The National could tackle that subject too?
That’s terrible, I can’t believe that someone rammed into them like that. Their poor parents, it must be absolute hell for them.