Many drivers in the UAE need to take more personal responsibility

When Dubai Police installed new traffic cameras that can detect offences even if a vehicle’s windows are tinted, it could be safely assumed that they expected to see at least some bad behaviour on the emirate’s busy roads. However, footage recently released by the force has revealed motorists taking scarcely believable risks with their lives and the lives of fellow road users.

In one instance, a driver is seen talking on two mobile phones behind the wheel; another reads a newspaper while driving at speed. In both cases, little attention – if any – is being paid to the road ahead of them.

According to Thomas Edelmann, managing director of Road Safety UAE, data from the Ministry of Interior shows that such distracted driving is the number-one cause of death on the country’s roads. “And within distracted driving,” he added, “the use of mobile phones is a very, very big contributor."

Most motorists will acknowledge that driving while on the phone is highly dangerous. In March, US insurance comparison company The Zebra commissioned a survey in which 71 per cent of respondents said they thought mobile use while at the wheel was as dangerous as drinking and driving.

And even though many countries’ laws and safety campaigns have made phoning and driving illegal and more socially unacceptable, the smartphones’ indispensability to modern life continues to prove a risk. Data analysis from the US’s National Safety Council has found that the percentage of drivers manipulating hand-held electronic devices – by texting, looking at a map or changing music – increased 82 per cent between 2013 and 2022.

Why do some drivers continue to endanger their lives in this way? Habit, pressure to respond immediately to calls or texts, fatally overestimating one’s ability to multitask or rationalising risk-taking behaviour are all possible contributors. However, at the heart of the matter is a lack of personal responsibility.

In the UAE, much good work has been done over the years to make the roads as safe as possible. Advanced cameras, safety campaigns and tough penalties for serious infractions all play an important role. At the end of the day however, the police and authorities cannot drive the car for us – we are responsible for what happens behind the wheel.

Given that technology is partly to blame for distracted driving, it should not be surprising that there is no shortage of technological “hacks” available to make our car journeys safer. There are apps that detect a vehicle’s movement and disable many smartphone features. It is also possible to record voicemails and other messages that automatically tell callers the driver is on the road and unavailable. Just as we restrict our devices on a plane journey, it is straightforward to adjust maps and music before setting the phone to flight mode and hitting the road.

These are simple, individual measures but they should be accompanied by consistent work to put personal responsibility at the heart of driving culture. The UAE is a country that is pro-active about road safety; new traffic laws are to come into force next March and there have been calls to make safe driving part of the school curriculum. Last week, The National outlined some other suggestions, such as speed-awareness courses instead of fines for marginal offences or motorists being required to refresh their driving theory when renewing their licence. Highlighting the acute danger of distracted driving would be an important addition to these measures.

Research in June 2022 published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that distracted driving is more dangerous that initially thought. In tests conducted by cognitive psychologists, subjects were given a driving-related activity and a distracting task. Results showed that even after the task was finished, the drivers’ ability to focus was still impaired for at least 30 more seconds. As anyone who has had car accident will attest, a crash takes only a split second. Reminding ourselves that it only takes a second to turn off our phone while driving may be the difference between life and death.