In February 1996, the BBC aired episode six of Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld from Dubai. I don’t actually remember seeing it but I remember being in it. There was a section on “bizarre facts” about Dubai’s motoring life and I had a piece to camera where I recalled a reenactment of a boating/trailer accident in front of the police before they would give any papers for the insurance claim. It had been an old Dubai folklore story, and not one of mine, even then.
Fast forward a few years, and I had a similar experience myself. Out in the desert, in the rain one winter, I managed to lose concentration on a well-worn track just long enough to veer into a bush, clout the bumper on my Land Rover and bash in the front panel enough to warrant actually getting it fixed. I took it to my trusty panel beater who said that the police were getting tighter on body damage repairs, so I’d best get a report.
No problem: down to Bur Dubai Police Station for a drop-by look-see (or so I thought). Suffice it to say, two hours and much unpersuasive argument later, I found myself leading a couple of officers out towards Awir to seek out, not only the track I had been on a week earlier, but also the offending bush! To add insult to injury, when we actually got to the edge of the desert, the police car got stuck and I had to pull it out and leave it there while we all went in my car to find the tree.
Once we got to the general area, I could not find the actual greenery, but it seemed that the performance was more than enough to convince anyone that my claim was genuine, so I got the green slip for the insurance repair and went on my way.
The point of this illustration is to note how insurance procedures have (generally) improved in the UAE. At least now we have a traffic police system and an insurance system that work from the same book of Dovetail Procedures, occasional horror stories notwithstanding. I now renew my car insurances online, there are testing stations all over the Emirates and you can get a car which is registered in one emirate and tested in another easily.
In Dubai, practically all the new car dealerships have an RTA office in or next door to them and the rules regarding no-injury fender benders have changed to help keep traffic flowing. It all adds up to making the car ownership proposition, and in particular, the insurance provision element, as easy as it is anywhere in Europe. So there won’t, in all likelihood, be another Clarkson’s Motorworld segment from Dubai; we just aren’t weird enough anymore.
What’s still weird, however, is how car insurance actually works. It is completely bonkers, for example, to insure a supercar for someone who still has spots and a licence so unmarked that you couldn’t lift fingerprints from it. And why should I be paying through the nose for my premium because there are people on my insurer’s books who have driving talents inversely proportional to their bank balances?
Surely, if you have a car insured for any driver, above or below a certain age, and with a recognised reciprocal driving licence, it should be quite OK for visiting friends and family to drive your car if you want them to. And how about the idea that insurance is calculated on the value of the car with little or no consideration given to how much experience you have, in what and for how long without a claim? I have seen so-called “no claims bonuses” offered here, but all I have been able to determine is that it means your next premium will not go up quite as much as the last one did, and the value of the car will plummet.
I am delighted that, in my experience over the last 30-odd years, there have been clear improvements, and paperwork that used to take three days can now be done in a morning. Given the rest of the region, in which I travel and drive extensively, we are now way ahead of the game. But car insurance is still a black art, an arcane activity practised by people who speak in tongues, and it’s high time it was brought into the open and given a good scrub.
weekend@thenational.ae
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
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Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
RACE CARD
6.30pm: Maiden (TB) Dh82,500 (Dirt) 1,200m
7.05pm: Maiden (TB) Dh82,500 (D) 1,900m
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8.15pm: Conditions (TB) Dh120,000 (D) 1,600m
8.50pm: Handicap (TB) Dh95,000 (D) 1,600m
9.25pm: Handicap (TB) Dh87,500 (D) 1,400m
Naga
Director: Meshal Al Jaser
Starring: Adwa Bader, Yazeed Almajyul, Khalid Bin Shaddad
Rating: 4/5
Banthology: Stories from Unwanted Nations
Edited by Sarah Cleave, Comma Press
J Street Polling Results
97% of Jewish-Americans are concerned about the rise in anti-Semitism
76% of US Jewish voters believe Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party are responsible for a rise in anti-Semitism
74% of American Jews agreed that “Trump and the Maga movement are a threat to Jews in America"
Rashid & Rajab
Director: Mohammed Saeed Harib
Stars: Shadi Alfons, Marwan Abdullah, Doaa Mostafa Ragab
Two stars out of five
Our legal consultants
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
How to avoid getting scammed
- Never click on links provided via app or SMS, even if they seem to come from authorised senders at first glance
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SPECS
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Mental health support in the UAE
● Estijaba helpline: 8001717
● UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention hotline: 045192519
● UAE Mental health support line: 800 4673 (Hope)
More information at hope.hw.gov.ae
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Haltia.ai
Started: 2023
Co-founders: Arto Bendiken and Talal Thabet
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: AI
Number of employees: 41
Funding: About $1.7 million
Investors: Self, family and friends
Key developments in maritime dispute
2000: Israel withdraws from Lebanon after nearly 30 years without an officially demarcated border. The UN establishes the Blue Line to act as the frontier.
2007: Lebanon and Cyprus define their respective exclusive economic zones to facilitate oil and gas exploration. Israel uses this to define its EEZ with Cyprus
2011: Lebanon disputes Israeli-proposed line and submits documents to UN showing different EEZ. Cyprus offers to mediate without much progress.
2018: Lebanon signs first offshore oil and gas licencing deal with consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek.
2018-2019: US seeks to mediate between Israel and Lebanon to prevent clashes over oil and gas resources.
ROUTE TO TITLE
Round 1: Beat Leolia Jeanjean 6-1, 6-2
Round 2: Beat Naomi Osaka 7-6, 1-6, 7-5
Round 3: Beat Marie Bouzkova 6-4, 6-2
Round 4: Beat Anastasia Potapova 6-0, 6-0
Quarter-final: Beat Marketa Vondrousova 6-0, 6-2
Semi-final: Beat Coco Gauff 6-2, 6-4
Final: Beat Jasmine Paolini 6-2, 6-2
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Kandahar
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Stars: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal
Rating: 2.5/5
Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
Seven Winters in Tehran
Director : Steffi Niederzoll
Starring: Reyhaneh Jabbari, Shole Pakravan, Zar Amir Ebrahimi
Rating: 4/5
One in nine do not have enough to eat
Created in 1961, the World Food Programme is pledged to fight hunger worldwide as well as providing emergency food assistance in a crisis.
One of the organisation’s goals is the Zero Hunger Pledge, adopted by the international community in 2015 as one of the 17 Sustainable Goals for Sustainable Development, to end world hunger by 2030.
The WFP, a branch of the United Nations, is funded by voluntary donations from governments, businesses and private donations.
Almost two thirds of its operations currently take place in conflict zones, where it is calculated that people are more than three times likely to suffer from malnutrition than in peaceful countries.
It is currently estimated that one in nine people globally do not have enough to eat.
On any one day, the WFP estimates that it has 5,000 lorries, 20 ships and 70 aircraft on the move.
Outside emergencies, the WFP provides school meals to up to 25 million children in 63 countries, while working with communities to improve nutrition. Where possible, it buys supplies from developing countries to cut down transport cost and boost local economies.
HOW TO ACTIVATE THE GEMINI SHORTCUT ON CHROME CANARY
1. Go to chrome://flags
2. Find and enable Expansion pack for the Site Search starter pack
3. Restart Chrome Canary
4. Go to chrome://settings/searchEngines in the address bar and find the Chat with Gemini shortcut under Site Search
5. Open a new tab and type @ to see the Chat with Gemini shortcut along with other Omnibox shortcuts to search tabs, history and bookmarks
The years Ramadan fell in May
Scoreline
Liverpool 4
Oxlade-Chamberlain 9', Firmino 59', Mane 61', Salah 68'
Manchester City 3
Sane 40', Bernardo Silva 84', Gundogan 90'+1