Saturday, February 6, 2010

Blogging Marathon Chapter 3

English


Globalization

Truck driving ethics are kind of a global disease. How is it possible for so many different people to grow up so far away from each other, experience culturally divergent lives and yet acquire the same values?!

I spent one week in a Qatar recently and a truck nearly killed us. It was also at night, there was construction everywhere and the side of the road looked like one huge excavation. The pick-up driver behind us decided to glue his truck to our behind so closely had the car in front of us braked suddenly, there would have been no way for him to avoid crashing us! Once in position, he started flickering his lights on and off for a good minute indicating that he wanted us to move to the side which was basically impossible for us at that moment. He kept his little game until we finally could move aside (and hubby was completely blind) and then just kept on driving to our left and pushing us to move further to right, where the excavation was! Hubby managed to slow down and get rid of him and when the psycho overtook us; his passenger flicked a lit cigarette on our windshield! Like I said: ethics.

Dubai truck drivers are not better, far from it. I was driving on a highway near a residential area in Barsha. A crazy construction truck behind me kept honking for me to move aside on a road still under development. It was narrow, bumpy and twisted like Metn’s mountain streets (although Dubai is flatter than flat) and basically, very difficult for me to move aside for this gigantic monster to have enough space to overtake me. At the intersection, the road becomes wider and then merges with a huge highway on the left and a massive ramp on the right which is where I needed to go. Finally, there was enough space for the truck to overtake me. The monster carefully positioned himself in front of me, blocking my view and obstructing me from taking my lane. I couldn’t go further to the right and get away from him since other cars were driving really fast on their way to the ramp. I couldn't go to the left because it was not the direction I needed to take; I had to go up on the ramp and he was still driving slowly and blocking my view and my way. When he finally moved and took the left road at the very last second, I realized he was trying to force me into an accident by pushing me to crash in the ramp border! I was a few centimeters away from a huge accident! All I could think about was what if I had children with me in the car? I could have easily collided and God knows what would have happened.

Every day in Dubai we hear of bus drivers speeding and crashing and killing the passengers with them. Every day in Dubai we fear for our lives and those with us in the car as we try to control our actions and predict others’ irresponsible behavior. Every single day.

These people have absolutely no value for human life. They don’t care if they drive you into an excavation or crash you on a highway ramp. They are probably just so bored and tired of driving all day and night that they take their anger out on innocent people for no valid reason. Never mind sending someone to a hospital or even the morgue!

Seriously, I don’t care about these people’s backgrounds (education, financial status, etc.) because I know that money doesn’t make ethics. Either you have it or you don’t. You don’t need a good job to value human life. You don’t need to make millions to act responsibly and think of innocent lives and innocent children.

These public dangers on wheels are just criminals; they’re evidently psychopaths who need to be locked up and if needed, institutionalized and treated.

Blogging Marathon Chapter 1
Blogging Marathon Chapter 2


Finally, a review of my fav’ categories ;)

& Don’t forget to check the visual posts ;)

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